Ableton Live 7 LE Reference Manual
Live LE for Windows and Mac OS Created by Bernd Roggendorf, Gerhard Behles, Robert Henke, Awi, Reiner Rudolph, Stefan Haller, Stefan Franke, Frank Hoffmann, Andreas Zapf, Ralf Suckow, Gregor Klinke, Matthias Mayrock, Friedemann Schautz, Ingo Koehne, Jakob Rang, Pablo Sara, Nicholas Allen, Henrik Lafrenz, Jan Buchholz, Kevin Haywood, Dominik Wilms, Christian Kleine, Amaury Groc, Daniel Büttner, Alex Koch, Henrik Hahn, Simon Frontzek, Torsten Wendland, Torsten Slama, Eduard Müller, Jeremy Bernstein, Bernard C
1 Chapter 1 Welcome to Live 1.1 The Ableton Team Says: Thank You Live is the result of musicians wanting a better way to create, produce and perform music using a computer. A great deal of effort has been put into making Live easy and fun to use, yet at the same time capable of helping you create music with unlimited depth and sophistication. This effort continues even as you read these lines...
CHAPTER 1. WELCOME TO LIVE 1.2 What's New in Live 7? 1.2.1 Multiple Time Signatures 2 Work with multiple time signatures in both Arrangement and Session view 1.2.2 Multiple Automation Editor Lanes View and edit multiple automation envelopes for a track simultaneously in the Arrangement View 1.2.3 Better Tempo Control Map song tempo to multiple controllers for coarse and ne adjustments 1.2.
CHAPTER 1.
4 Chapter 2 First Steps Note: This manual has been adapted for Live LE. Speci cally, this means that features which are not available in Live LE have not been included. To learn more about the differences between Live LE and the full version of Live, please see the feature comparison chart or download the full Ableton Reference Manual from the Ableton website1 . The full-version reference manual also contains information about all of Ableton's add-on instruments.
CHAPTER 2. FIRST STEPS 5 directly in the program via the Help menu. We highly recommend following the lessons. Many users have told us that the lessons helped them become familiar with the program very quickly. We also recommend that you read the Live Concepts chapter, which encapsulates everything that Live is and can do, and is therefore a worthwhile read for both beginners and experienced users.
CHAPTER 2. FIRST STEPS 2.2 6 Setting up Preferences Live's Preferences window is where you can nd various settings that determine how Live looks, behaves and interfaces with the outside world. This window is accessed from the Preferences command, which in Windows is available in the Options menu and in OS X , (PC) / is available in the Live menu. Preferences can also be accessed with the Ctrl , (Mac) shortcut.
CHAPTER 2. FIRST STEPS 2.3 7 The Main Live Screen Most of your work in Live happens in the main Live screen. This screen consists of a number of views, and each view manages a speci c aspect of your Live Set, which is the type of document that you create and work on in Live. Since screen space is usually limited, the Live views can't all be displayed at the same time.
CHAPTER 2. FIRST STEPS 8 Adjusting the Main Window Split.
9 Chapter 3 Unlocking Live Live is protected against illegal use by a copy protection scheme. This scheme has been designed to meet the highest security standards while avoiding hassles for our customers. If you nd this procedure to be an inconvenience, please understand that the copy protection secures your investment: It allows Ableton to provide you with support and to continue developing Live. 3.
CHAPTER 3. UNLOCKING LIVE 10 Please note that products such as Operator and Sampler are sold separately from Live but are unlocked using the same procedure described here. You can always enter any new serial numbers and unlock additional products in the Authorizations/Trial tab in the Preferences window. Live's Preferences are available via the Options menu (or the Live menu in Mac OS X). The serial number identi es your ownership of Live.
CHAPTER 3. UNLOCKING LIVE 11 For details, please see the corresponding section. 3.2.3 Unlocking Online If the computer you want to unlock Live for is connected to the Internet, the only thing you need to do is press the Unlock Online button. Live will then create a connection to the Ableton server, send your serial number and challenge code, and receive the unlock key from the server. No information other than this is exchanged between your computer and the Ableton server. 3.2.
CHAPTER 3. UNLOCKING LIVE 3.3 3.3.1 12 Copy Protection FAQs Can I Use Live or Other Ableton Products Without a Serial Number? If you do not (yet) own Live or its add-on products, you can still try them out, but saving and exporting will be disabled. If trying Live or another product raises your interest in purchasing it, please visit the Ableton webshop3 . This site contains information about Ableton's distributor and dealer network. It also offers you the opportunity to buy Ableton products online. 3.
CHAPTER 3. UNLOCKING LIVE 13 They can be reached by: E-mail5 ; Telephone: +49 (0)30 - 288 763 151 (available Monday to Friday 11 to 15hrs CET); Fax: +49 (0)30 - 288 763 11. To speed up the process, please: Register your copy of Live6 ; Include a brief explanation of the circumstances. To use Live on more than one computer at a time, you require a secondary license or a site license. Ableton offers these licenses at special rates. Please contact the sales team7 for details. 3.3.
14 Chapter 4 Live Concepts This chapter introduces the essential concepts of Live. We advise you to read this chapter early in your Live career, as a solid understanding of the program's basic principles will help you fully exploit Live's potential for your music-making. 4.1 Live Sets The type of document that you create and work on in Live is called a Live Set.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 15 Selecting the Library bookmark in Live's File Browser will take you to the Live Library of creative tools. There are a number of Demo Sets here, and double-clicking a Live Set's name in the Browser will open that Live Set. 4.2 Arrangement and Session The basic musical building blocks of Live are called clips. A clip is a piece of musical material: a melody, a drum pattern, a bassline or a complete song.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 16 The Arrangement View and the Session View interact in useful (though potentially confusing) ways. One can, for instance, improvise with Session clips and record a log of the improvisation into the Arrangement for further re nement. This works because Arrangement and Session are connected via tracks. 4.3 Tracks Tracks host clips and also manage the ow of signals, as well as the creation of new clips through recording, sound synthesis, effects processing and mixing.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 17 The exclusivity of clips in a track also implies that, at any on time, a track will either play a Session clip or an Arrangement clip, but never both. So, who wins? When a Session clip is launched, the respective track stops whatever it is doing to play that clip. In particular, if the track was playing an Arrangement clip, it will stop it in favor of the Session clip even as the other tracks continue to play what is in the Arrangement.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 18 Audio signals are recorded and played back using audio tracks, and MIDI signals are recorded and played back using MIDI tracks. The two track types have their own corresponding clip types. Audio clips cannot live on MIDI tracks and vice versa. Information about inserting, reordering and deleting audio and MIDI tracks is found here. 4.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 19 An Audio Clip's Properties as Displayed in the Clip View. Many powerful manipulations arise from Live's warping capabilities. Warping means changing the speed of sample playback independently from the pitch so as to match the song tempo. The tempo can be adjusted on the y in the Control Bar's Tempo eld. The Control Bar's Tempo Field. The most elementary use of this technique, and one that usually requires no manual setup, is synchronizing sample loops to the chosen tempo.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 20 MIDI Files Are Dragged in from Live's File Browsers. As you'd expect, a MIDI clip's contents can be accessed and edited via the Clip View, for instance to change a melody or paint a drum pattern. A MIDI Clip's Properties as Displayed in the Clip View. 4.7 Devices and the Mixer A track can have not only clips but also a chain of devices for processing signals. Doubleclicking a track's title bar brings up the Track View, which shows the track's device chain.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 21 The Track View Displaying a MIDI Track's Device Chain. Live's built-in audio effects, MIDI effects and instruments are available from the Device Browser and can be added to tracks by dragging them from there into the Track View, or into a Session or Arrangement track. Live's Built-in Devices Are Available from the Device Browser. You can also use plug-in devices in Live. VST and Audio Units (Mac OS X only) Plug-ins are available from the Plug-In Device Browser.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 22 Plug-In Devices Are Available from the Plug-In Device Browser. Consider an audio clip playing in an audio track. The audio signal from the clip reaches the leftmost device in the chain. This device processes (changes) the signal and feeds the result into the next device, and so on. The number of devices per track is theoretically unlimited, (although there is a limit of eight instruments and twelve audio effects within a single set when using Live LE).
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 23 The mixer has controls for volume, pan position and sends, which adjust the contribution each track makes to the input of any return tracks. Return tracks only host effects, and not clips. Via their sends, all tracks can feed a part of their signal into a return track and share its effects. The mixer also includes a crossfader, which can create smooth transitions between clips playing on different tracks.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 24 the track's mix and Send controls disappear from the mixer. The Mixer for a MIDI Track without an Instrument. 4.8 Presets and Racks Every Live device can store and retrieve particular sets of parameter values as presets. As presets are stored independently from Live Sets, new presets become part of a library that any project can draw from. Live's Instrument, Drum and Effect Racks allow saving combinations of devices and their settings as a single preset.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 25 Track Routing Is Set up Using the In/Out Section in the Arrangement (Left) or Session View (Right). Signals from the tracks can be sent to the outside world via the computer's audio and MIDI interfaces or to other tracks or devices within Live. Likewise, a track can be set up to receive an input signal to be played through the track's devices. Again, tracks can receive their input from the outside or from another track or device in Live.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 26 these commences recording. Clicking the Clip Record button again de nes the end of the recording and launches the new clip. As these actions are subject to real-time launch quantization, the resulting clips can be automatically cut to the beat. The Control Bar's Quantization Chooser.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 4.12 27 Clip Envelopes Envelopes are found not only in tracks but also in clips. Clip envelopes are used to modulate device and mixer controls. Audio clips have, in addition, clip envelopes to in uence the clip's pitch, volume and more; these can be used to change the melody and rhythm of recorded audio. MIDI clips have additional clip envelopes to represent MIDI controller data.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 28 The Key/MIDI Map Controls. Session clips, switches, buttons and radio buttons can be mapped to computer keyboard keys as well. This happens in Key Map Mode, which works just like MIDI Map Mode. Live offers, in addition to this general purpose mapping technique, dedicated support for Mackie Control-compatible mixer surfaces, which allows for mouse-free operation of the program. 4.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 29 A Live Clip in the File Browser. Live Clips are a very powerful way of storing ideas, as they save not only the clip's Clip View settings, but also the corresponding track's instruments and effects chain. Live Clips in the Browser can be previewed and added to any open Live Set just like sample les. In the Live Set, they restore the original clip's creative options.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 30 Choosing the Library Bookmark. The rst time you run Live, it will automatically install its Library to your standard user folder. You can, of course, move it to a new location. After installation the Library will already contain a few sound ideas, courtesy of Ableton. We encourage you to experiment with this material to get a sense of what the program can do, but we do not recommend removing or changing the contents of the factory Library.
31 Chapter 5 Managing Files and Sets Various types of les are used in making music with Live, from those containing MIDI and audio, to more program-speci c les such as Live Clips and Live Sets. This chapter will explain everything you need to know about working with each of these le types in Live. However, we should rst take a look at Live's File Browsers, through which most les arrive in the program. 5.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 32 The File Browser Selector Buttons. Each Browser can point to a different disk location, which Live will remember across sessions. The Browser display is divided into columns corresponding to Name , Date, etc., which you can show and hide using the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu options. Showing/Hiding Browser Columns. Columns can be reordered by drag and drop. To resize the columns, drag their divider lines horizontally. Resizing Browser Columns. 5.1.
33 CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS Library Is this Browser's Root. The Browser root can easily be changed: The topmost Browser item, called Parent Folder, will move the Browser root up one step up in the disk hierarchy when double-clicked. The File Browser's Parent Folder Item. You can also set the Browser root to any folder in the Browser via the (PC) / (Mac) context menu, by double-clicking the folder, or by selecting it and pressing Ctrl Return . A Folder in the Browser.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 34 then select the Close All Folders option to show only top-level folders. Double-clicking a File Browser's selector button will do the same. 5.1.2 Browser Bookmarks Using bookmarks, you can quickly save and recall frequently used folder locations in the Browser. Clicking in the Browser's title bar will open the Bookmark menu. The Bookmark Menu. The Bookmark menu lists a number of preset bookmarks such as Desktop and Library.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 35 Activating Browser Search Mode. After entering your search terms, begin the search by clicking the Go button or pressing Return on your computer keyboard. The Search Field and Go Button. Live will search the entire Browser root for your search terms. The results will include les that match all search terms, as opposed to any. For example, if you search for acoustic bass, the search will yield all acoustic bass sounds not all acoustic sounds and all bass sounds.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 36 The Rescan Button. Automatic rescanning for new searches can be activated and deactivated in the File/Folder Preferences. While a search/rescan is going on, the adjacent search button is labeled Stop. Rescanning happens in the background, and you can keep making music while Live does its work, but you can also abort the search with this button if the disk traf c is bothering you. You can go back to the Browser's folder view at any time by closing the search eld.
37 CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS indicate this via a small rotating ring on the Browser button. The Rotating Ring Means That a Search is in Progress. For mouse-free searching, we suggest the following sequence of shortcuts: 1) Ctrl F (PC) / F (Mac) to open the search eld; 2) Type your search terms; 3) Return to Go ; 4) to jump to the search results; 5) and 6) to scroll the search results; Ctrl F (PC) / back to the folder view. 5.1.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 38 Click on the les (or use and ) to select and listen to them. If the transport is running, Live tries to preview les in sync with the current Live Set, so that you can better judge which samples will work for you. If the transport is stopped, les will preview at their original tempo. The previewing volume can be adjusted using the mixer's Preview Volume knob. The Preview Volume Knob.
39 CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS Dropping a Clip to Create a New Track. In the Session View, double-clicking or pressing Return on a le in the Browser will automatically create a new track to the right of the other tracks and load it with the clip. Files can be dropped directly into Live from the Explorer (Windows)/Finder (Mac). 5.1.6 File Maintenance in the Browser You can use Live's File Browsers for all of the le maintenance activities that you are familiar with on your operating system.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.1.7 40 Hot-Swap Mode In addition to the drag-and-drop method of loading les from the Browser, Live offers a Hot-Swap Mode to save you mouse travel. Hot-Swap Mode establishes a temporary link between the Browser and, for example, a virtual instrument. While in Hot-Swap Mode, you can step through samples or presets to audition them in place, that is, within the instrument. Hot-swapping for presets is covered in the Live Device Presets section.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 41 is selected, or if the Hot-Swap button is pressed again. Hot-swapping can also be cancelled with a press of the Esc key. When Hot-Swap Mode is re-entered, the Hot-Swap Browser will try to reconstruct what you saw when you loaded the current le into the Impulse slot. If, for instance, the current le was found by searching for gretsch kick, the Hot-Swap Browser will come up with that search string in the search eld.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.2.1 42 The Decoding Cache To save computational resources, Live keeps the decoded sample les of compressed samples in the decoding cache. Maintenance of the cache is normally not required, as Live automatically deletes older les to make room for those that are new. You can, however, impose limits on the cache size using the File/Folder Preferences' Decoding Cache section.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 43 Storing default clip settings with the analysis le is different from saving the clip as a Live Clip. While analysis les are a handy way to store default information about a particular sample's settings, keep in mind that you can use different settings for each clip within a Live Set even if those clips refer to the same sample on disk.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 44 data CD, which could serve as a backup of your work or be used with other digital audio applications. Which Signal Will Be Rendered? The Rendered Track Chooser. The Export dialog's Rendered Track chooser offers several options for which audio signal to render: Master the post-fader signal at Live's Master output. If you are monitoring the Master output, you can be sure that the rendered le will contain exactly what you hear.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 45 Remember a rendered audio le contains only what you heard prior to rendering. So, for example, if you're playing back some combination of Session View clips and Arrangement material, then that is what will be captured in your rendered le regardless of which view is active when you render. Audio Rendering Options Audio Rendering Options.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS File Type, Bit Depth, Sample Rate created. Convert to Mono le. 46 These options specify the type of sample to be If this is activated, Live will create a mono le instead of a stereo Dither Options If you are rendering at a bit depth lower than 32-bit, choose one of the dither modes. Dithering adds a small amount of noise to rendered audio, but minimizes artifacts when reducing the bit depth.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 47 A MIDI File and its Tracks in the Browser. Note that while you can rename or delete entire MIDI les via the Browser, this is not possible with the individual MIDI tracks contained within them. This is also the case with the individual components of Live Sets. 5.3.1 Exporting MIDI Files Live MIDI clips can be exported as Standard MIDI les. To export a MIDI clip, use the File menu's Export Selected MIDI Clip command.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 48 A Live Clip in the Browser. Live Clips are a great way of storing your ideas for later use or development, as they save not only the original clip, including all its clip and envelope settings, but also the original track's devices. In order to recreate a Live Clip's device chain, either import it into a track containing no clips or devices, or drag it into the space in the Session or Arrangement View containing no tracks.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 49 and manage all of the various components of the Live Set: Live Clips, device presets, any samples used, etc. 5.5.1 Creating, Opening and Saving Sets Use the File menu's New Live Set command to create new Live Sets, and the Open or Open Recent command to open existing ones. In the File Browser, you can double-click or press Return on a Live Set to open it. The File menu's Save command saves the current Live Set exactly as it is, including all clips and settings.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 50 Arrangement View Drop Area for Importing Live Sets. If you prefer to import individual tracks from a Set, you can unfold the Live Set in the File Browser just as if it were a folder. Unfolding a Set to Reveal its Tracks. You can now drag the individual tracks and drop them as described at the beginning of this section. Of the three tracks contained in the Tango Set shown in the following gure, two contain Session View clips.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 51 You can browse, preview and import Session View clips from the Set as if they had been stored as individual Live Clips. This, basically, means that any Live Set can serve as a pool of sounds for any other, suggesting creative reuse and crossover. 5.5.3 Exporting Session Clips as New Sets You can export a selection of Session View clips as a new Live Set by dragging them to the File Browser.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 52 many clips or instruments within the Live Set are using that sample. Here is what you can do: Replace a sample Dragging a sample from the File Browser and dropping it on a line in the list makes the Live Set reference the new sample instead of the old one. For samples used in audio clips, Live retains the clip properties; the Warp Markers are kept if the new sample has the same or a greater length as the old sample and discarded otherwise.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 53 The Sample Reference List's Location Column. 5.6 Live Projects A Live Project is a folder containing Live-related les that belong together. Consider, for example, work on a piece of music: You start out with an empty Live Set; you record audio and thereby create new sample les; you drag in samples from collections; you save different versions of the Live Set along the way so that you can go back and compare.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 54 A Live Set and its Recordings in a Live Project Folder. The project folder ( Tango Project ) contains the Live Set ( Tango.als ) and a Samples folder, which in turn contains a Recorded folder with two samples in it. Note that the current Project is also indicated in the title bar of Live's application window. Next, we record another track into our Project. We save the modi ed version of the Live Set under a new name so that we do not lose the previous version.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 55 to save it outside the Tango Project folder, say on the Desktop. Live creates a new project folder named Samba Project next to Tango Project. A New Project Was Added Next to Tango Project. So far we have seen how to create Live Projects and save versions of Live Sets into them. How do we open a Project? Simply by opening any of its contained Live Sets. Doubleclicking Tango with Piano.als opens that Set and the associated Project as displayed in Live's title bar.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 56 A New Project Was Added by Saving a Live Set Outside its Original Project. Note that the new project folder has no Samples folder (yet). Electro with Piano.als is still referencing the piano sample from the original Tango Project. There is nothing wrong with this except for when the Tango Project is moved away or deleted; then Tango with Piano.als will be missing samples. You can prevent this by collecting samples.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.6.2 57 Projects and Presets By default, new instrument and effect presets are stored in the Live Library, making them available to any project. At times however, it may make more sense to save a preset with the current Project. You might, for example, want to keep a number of alternative master EQ settings for a given piece. These EQ presets are speci c to the piece and of little use to other Projects.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 58 listing unused samples in the Project; packing a Project in Live Pack format; exporting the Project's contents to the Library. 5.7 The Live Library The Live Library acts as a repository of commonly used les, such as samples, clips and Live Device Presets, that are available to all Live Projects. In Live's File Browsers, the Library is accessible through a bookmark: Choosing the Library Bookmark.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 59 By default, the Live 7 Library contains the following sub-folders: Ableton Project Info contains les that Live uses to identify the Library as a Project, which allows it to be manageable using the File Manager. It also contains logs that keep track of what Live Packs have been installed. Clips contains the Live Clips that are installed as part of the Live 7 Basics pack.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 60 The Library Location Chooser. If any of these previous Library locations are now unavailable (perhaps because of an unattached external drive, a moved or renamed folder, or an angry roommate) these will appear greyed-out in the list. If you know that these unavailable locations are gone for good, you can remove them by using the Clear Unavailable Locations option at the bottom of the chooser: Unavailable Library Locations can be Cleared from the List.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 61 contents. In all three of these cases, you may also choose to create a new Library, without copying or moving any content from the previous location. Live will then offer to install any default packages to the new location. If the target location is a Library that was made with an older version of Live, you will be warned about possible compatibility issues. It is generally not a good idea to try to share a single Library between two different versions of Live.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 62 The File Manager's List of Missing Samples. 5.8.1 Manual Repair To manually x a broken sample reference, locate the missing sample in the File Browser, drag it over to the File Manager and drop it on the respective line in the list of missing les. Note that Live will not care if the sample you offer is really the sample that was missing. 5.8.2 Automatic Repair Live offers a convenient automatic search function for repairing sample references.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 63 Automatic Repair Options in the File Manager. Search Folder includes a user-de ned folder, as well as any sub-folders, in the search. To select the folder, click the associated Set Folder button. Search Project includes this Set's project folder in the search. Search Library includes the Live Library in the search. For each missing sample, the automatic search function may nd any number of candidates.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.9 64 Collecting External Samples To prevent a Live Set from containing broken sample references, Live provides the option of collecting (i.e., copying) them into the Set's project folder. This is accomplished via the File Manager: Choose the Manage Files command from the File menu Click the Manage Set button Unfold the triangular-shaped fold button in the External Samples section. Options for Collecting External Samples.
65 CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS Separated by location (the Library, installed by factory Live Packs, other Projects and elsewhere sample collections from external drives, for example), the File Manager provides: A sample count and the associated disk space used; A Show button that will list the samples in the File Browser; A Yes/No toggle for engaging or disengaging collection.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 66 Any selection of Live Sets, Live Clips, Live Presets (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) on the respective items in the File Browser, and choose the Manage Files command. Remember to click the Collect and Save button at the bottom of the File Manager when you are nished. Otherwise your changes will be discarded. 5.11 Finding Unused Samples Live's File Manager can nd the unused samples in a Project for you.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.12 67 Packing Projects into Live Packs Live's File Manager provides the option of packing a Live Project in Live Pack format for convenient archiving and transfer. To do this, choose the Manage Files command from the File menu, click the Manage Project button, and then click on the triangular-shaped fold button next to Packing. Click the Create Live Pack button to bring up a le-select dialog where you can specify the name and location of a new Live Pack le.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 68 the device's title bar and dropping into the Current Project. You can then use the File Management tools, collect any referenced samples, etc. 5.13.3 Can I Work On Multiple Versions of a Set? If you'd like to work on different versions of the same Live Set, save them into the same Project. This will usually be the Project that was created when you saved the rst version of the Live Set.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 69 2) Navigate to the Project folder in the Browser and choose Manage Project via the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu. 3) If you've changed the original location of any samples used in the Project, the Missing Samples section of the File Manager will indicate this. Click the Locate button to search for the samples. 4) Since you know that your samples are all in the Project folder, unfold Automatic Search. Then enable the Search Project and Fully Rescan Folders options.
70 Chapter 6 Arrangement View The Arrangement View displays the Arrangement, which contains music laid out along a song timeline, like a multitrack tape. A Piece of Music in the Arrangement View. The Arrangement View is a powerful editing tool that easily lets you combine and arrange MIDI, loops, sound effects and complete pieces of music.
71 CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 6.1 Navigation Live offers several fast methods for zooming and scrolling the Arrangement display: 6 1 2 3 4 5 Navigating the Arrangement View. 1. To smoothly change the zoom level, click and drag vertically in the beat-time ruler at the top of the Arrangement View (you can also drag horizontally to scroll the display). 2. To zoom in and out around the current selection, use the computer keyboard's + Alt and - keys.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 72 horizontally to scroll the display. Using this method, you can zoom and scroll to focus around any part of the Arrangement with just one mouse motion. 6. To have the Arrangement display follow the song position and scroll automatically, turn on the Follow switch, or use the Follow command from the Options menu. 6.2 Transport There are a number of ways to control Live's transport with the computer keyboard and mouse: 1.
73 CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW the Arrangement the size of the chosen quantization setting will be repeatedly played. With small quantization settings, or a setting of None, this allows you to scrub through the music. Scrubbing Arrangement Playback. 4. The song position can be adjusted numerically using the Control Bar's Arrangement Position elds. The Arrangement Position elds show the song position in bars-beats-sixteenths. To change the values: Click and drag up or down in any of these elds.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 6.3 74 Launching the Arrangement with Locators Using Locators to Launch Play in the Arrangement. Locators can be set at any point in the Arrangement. This can be done in real time during playback or recording with the Set Locator button, and will be quantized according to the global quantization value set in the Control Bar. Clicking the Set Locator button when the Arrangement is not playing will create a locator at the insert marker or selection start.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 75 To name a locator, select it by clicking its triangular marker, and choose the Rename Edit R (PC) / R (Mac) shortcut). You can also enter menu command (or use the Ctrl your own info text for a locator via the Edit Info Text command in the Edit menu or in the locator's (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu. Locators can be removed with your computer's or Delete key, the Insert menu, or the Delete Locator button.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 76 select the area up to the next time signature marker. Any time signature with a one- or two-digit numerator and a denominator of 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 can be used as a time signature marker value. The numbers must be separated by a delimiter such as a slash, comma, period, or any number of spaces. These marker values can also be set by adjusting the time signature elds in the Control Bar, either by typing in values or dragging the numerator and denominator sliders.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 77 Please note that these resolution options affect all tracks - deleting and inserting time changes the length of the entire Arrangement. If you import a MIDI le into the Arrangement, you'll be given an option to import any time signature information that was saved with the le. If you choose to do this, Live will automatically create time signature markers in the correct places. This makes it very easy to work with complex music created in other sequencer or notation software.
78 CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW and nudge the loop brace to the left/right by the current grid setting. and shift the loop brace left/right in steps the size of its length. The Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi er used with the arrow left and right keys shortens or lengthens the loop by the current grid setting. The Ctrl (PC) / halves the loop length.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 6.7 79 Selecting Clips and Time With the exception of moving and resizing clips, Arrangement editing in Live is selectionbased: You select something using the mouse, then execute a menu command (e.g., Cut, Copy, Paste, Duplicate) on the selection. This editing method lends itself to an ef cient division of labor between the two hands: One hand operates the mouse or trackpad, while the other hand issues the keyboard shortcuts for the menu commands.
80 CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW Clicking the Loop Brace to Select the Loop for Editing. 6.8 Using the Editing Grid To ease editing, the cursor will snap to grid lines that represent the meter subdivisions of the song tempo. The grid can be set to be either zoom-adaptive or xed. You can set the width of both zoom-adaptive and xed grid lines using the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu available in either the Arrangement View track area or the Clip View display.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 6.9 81 Using the ...Time Commands Whereas the standard commands like Cut, Copy and Paste only affect the current selection, their ... Time counterparts act upon all tracks by inserting and deleting time. Any time signature markers within the selected region will also be affected. Cut Time cuts a selection of time from the Arrangement, thereby moving any audio or MIDI on either side of the cut area closer together in the timeline.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 6.10 82 Splitting Clips The Split command can divide a clip or isolate part of it. To split a clip in two halves, do the following: 1. Unfold the track; 2. In the waveform or MIDI display, click at the position where you want the clip to be split; 3. Execute the Split command. To isolate a part of a clip, do the following: 1. Unfold the track; 2. In the waveform or MIDI display, drag a selection over the part of the clip you want to isolate; 3.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 83 Consolidating Several Clips Into a New Clip. Suppose you have, by editing or improvising, come up with a layout of clips that sound good in Arrangement Loop mode. Selecting that part of the Arrangement, for instance by using the Edit menu's Select Loop command, and then executing the Consolidate command creates a new clip that can be treated as a loop. You can now, for instance, drag the clip edges to create more repetitions.
84 Chapter 7 Session View In Live's Arrangement View, as in all traditional sequencing programs, everything happens along a xed song timeline. For a number of applications, this is a limiting paradigm: When playing live, or when DJing, the order of pieces, the length of each piece and the order of parts within each piece is generally not known in advance. In the theatre, sound has to react to what happens on stage.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 7.1 85 Session View Clips The Controls for a Session View Clip. 1. Each clip in the Session View has a triangular button at the left edge. Click the button with the mouse to launch clip playback at any time, or pre-select a clip by clicking on its name, and launch it using the computer's Return key. You can then move on to the neighboring clips using the arrow keys. Please refer the manual section on clip launch settings for details on how to customize this behavior. 2.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 86 The Arrangement Position Fields and the Stop Button. 7.2 Tracks and Scenes Each vertical column, or track, can play only one clip at a time. It therefore makes sense to put a set of clips that are supposed to be played alternatively in the same columns: parts of a song, variations of a drum loop, etc. Resized Session View Tracks. For convenient access to more clips at once, you can resize Session View tracks by clicking and dragging at the edges of their title bars.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 87 The scene below a launched scene will automatically be selected as the next to be launched unless the Select Next Scene on Launch option in the Launch Preferences is set to Off. This allows you to trigger scenes from top to bottom without having to select them rst. Computer keys or a MIDI controller can be used to launch scenes and scroll between them. Scenes can be renamed using the Rename command in the Edit menu or the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 7.3 88 The Track Status Fields You can tell a track's status by looking at the Track Status eld just above the active track's mixer controls: A Track Playing a Looping Session Clip... The pie-chart icon represents a looping Session clip. The number to the right of the circle is the loop length in beats, and the number at the left represents how many times the loop has been played since its launch. ... A One-shot Session Clip...
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 7.4 89 Setting Up the Session View Grid Clips arrive in the Session View by being imported from the File Browsers or through recording. Dropping Multiple Clips Into the Session View. If you are dragging multiple clips into the Session View, Live defaults to arrange them vertically, in one track. Hold down Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) prior to dropping them so as to lay the clips out in one scene. Clips can be moved around the Session grid by drag-and-drop.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 7.4.2 90 Removing Clip Stop Buttons Slots Without Clip Stop Buttons. You can add and remove Clip Stop buttons from the grid using the Edit menu's Add/Remove Stop Button command. This is useful for pre-con guring the scene launch behavior: If, for instance, you don't want scene 3 to affect track 4, remove the scene 3/track 4 Stop button. 7.4.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 91 The Control Bar's Record Button. When the Record button is on, Live logs all of your actions into the Arrangement: the clips launched; changes of those clips' properties; changes of the mixer and the devices' controls, also known as automation; tempos and time signature changes, if they are included in the names of launched scenes. To nish recording, press the Record button again, or stop playback. The Arrangement Selector.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 92 The Stop All Clips Button. To disable all Arrangement clips simultaneously, click on the Stop All Clips button in the Master Track Status eld. The clips in the Arrangement and in the Session View exist independently from one another, which makes it easy to improvise into the Arrangement over and over again until it's right.
93 Chapter 8 Clip View The Clip View is where clip properties can be set and adjusted. The Clip View. The Clip View is opened by clicking on the Clip Overview or double-clicking a clip in the Session or Arrangement View.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 94 Clicking the Clip Overview Opens the Clip View. In the Session View, clicking on a Track Status Field opens the Clip View for editing the clip that is currently running in the track. Clicking a Session View Track Status Field Opens the Clip View. The properties of more than one clip can be edited collectively in the Clip View as a multiselection.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 95 in common: The Clip box contains basic clip settings. The Envelopes box and the Envelope Editor manage the clip's envelopes, which are used to modulate the effects, mixer, and clip or MIDI controls. Clip envelopes and their associated Clip View components are covered in detail in a separate manual chapter. The Launch box controls clip launch behavior and, as such, only appears for Session View clips.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 96 The Clip View for a MIDI Clip. To make best use of the screen real estate, you can show or hide the Launch, Envelopes, and Sample or MIDI boxes using the Clip View Box selector in the Clips box. You can also toggle between the Sample Display/MIDI Editor and the Envelope Editor by clicking in the title bars of the Sample/Notes box and the Envelopes box, respectively. The Clip View Box Selector Shows and Hides Various Clip View Components.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.1 97 The Clip Box The Clip Box. 8.1.1 Clip Activator Switch Using this switch, you can deactivate a clip so that it does not play when launched in the Session View or during Arrangement playback. Clips can also be activated/deactivated (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context directly from the Session or Arrangement View with their menus. 8.1.2 Clip Name and Color The Clip Name eld allows naming the clip.
98 CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW The Clip Color chooser allows choosing a clip color. 8.1.3 Clip Signature Using the Clip Signature elds, you can specify the time signature of a MIDI or audio clip. This setting is relevant only for display; it does not affect playback. Please note that Clip Signature is completely separate from the project's time signature, and can be set independently for each clip.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 99 Groove can be applied to both MIDI clips and audio clips. Applying groove to audio clips does require that the Warp switch be activated and a Warp Mode other than Re-Pitch selected. If an audio clip is in Beats Mode, the Transients setting must be greater than or equal to the Clip Groove chooser's swing setting (e.g., with a Transients setting of 1/16, Swing 8 and Swing 16 can be used, but not Swing 32).
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 100 The Scrub Control in MIDI Map Mode. With quantization set to values less than one bar, it is easy to offset clip playback from Live's master clock by launching clips, using the Nudge buttons or scrubbing within the clip. 8.2 8.2.1 The Sample Box Warp Controls The Sample Box Warp Controls. When the Warp switch is off, Live plays the sample at its original, normal tempo, irrespective of the current Live Set tempo.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 101 To verify this, note that a warped sample's speed follows the tempo as you change the Control Bar's Tempo control. Live offers a number of controls to adjust the time-warping engine for optimal stretching quality. For accurate warping, Live needs to know the sample's metrical structure. For properly prepared loops, tempo and duration are calculated automatically; most of the time this is accurate enough that the sample is immediately ready for use in Live.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 102 The Clip Overview. The Clip Overview provides additional zoom/scrolling functionality. It always shows the complete clip, from start to end. The black rectangular outline represents the part of the clip that is currently displayed. You can click within the outline and drag horizontally or vertically to scroll or zoom. To have the Sample Display follow the play position and scroll automatically, turn on the Follow switch, or use the Follow command from the Options menu.
103 CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW and end markers), select the start marker, hold down , and use the arrow keys. Using Clip Start and End Controls to Change Clip Length. You can also adjust the clip start and end numerically using the respective value elds to the left of the Sample Display. For warped clips, these elds display values as bars-beatssixteenths; for unwarped clips, the display is in minutes-seconds-milliseconds. Notice that you can use the Set buttons here to place the markers during playback.
104 CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW the mouse is held down over the scrub area, a portion of the clip the size of the chosen quantization setting will be repeatedly played. With small quantization settings, or a setting of None, this allows you to scrub through the music. Looping Clips To have the clip play as a (potentially in nite) loop, turn on the Loop switch. Note that the Warp switch must be activated before the Loop switch is accessible, as unwarped clips cannot be looped.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 105 Regardless of the position of the loop brace, clip play upon launch will begin at the position marked by the start marker, which means you can set up the clip to run into a loop. Setting the Clip to Run Into a Loop.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.2.3 106 Clip Pitch and Gain The Clip Pitch and Gain Controls. The Transpose control shifts the clip pitch in semitones. The Detune eld ne-tunes the clip in cents (100 cents = one semitone). The Clip Gain slider, calibrated in dB, changes the clip gain. 8.2.4 Destructive Sample Editing The Launch Sample Editor Button. The Edit button opens the sample in an external sample editing application, which you can specify in the File/Folder Preferences.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.2.5 107 Saving Default Clip Settings with the Sample The Save Default Clip Button. The Save Default Clip button saves the current clip's settings with the sample. Once saved, Live will restore the current clip settings whenever you drop the sample into a Live Set. This is especially useful with regards to the Warp Markers, which have to be set correctly for Live to play long les in sync.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 108 Live 7. For this reason, we have provided a Legacy Hi-Q Mode option, which is enabled by default in the Options menu whenever you load an old Set that has Hi-Q enabled for any clips. Simply disable this option if you wish to use the new mode. 8.2.7 Clip Start and End Fades The Clip Fade Switch. The Clip Fade switch, when enabled, applies a short fade to the clip start and end to avoid clicks at the clip edges.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 109 out. Live can handle disk overloads more gracefully than swapped-out audio arriving late: Disk overloads result in unwanted mutes, whereas RAM overload results in both mutes and rhythmical hiccups. 8.2.9 Reversing Samples The Reverse Button. This function creates a new sample by reversing the sample referenced by the current clip.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.2.10 110 Cropping Samples The Sample Display's (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu includes the Crop Sample command. This function creates, similarly to the Reverse function, a new sample by copying the sample currently in use - but only the excerpt that is actually used plus a 50 millisecond safety margin on both ends. The new sample can be found, after saving the Live Set, in the Set's Project folder, under Samples/Processed/Crop.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.3 111 The Notes Box The Notes Box. 8.3.1 Tempo Controls The Orig. BPM eld displays Live's interpretation of the tempo at which the clip's MIDI was recorded. When dragging up or down in the Original BPM eld, or clicking the :2 and *2 buttons, you will see that the notes in the MIDI Editor are correspondingly stretched or compressed. This is useful for aligning notes that you have recorded without a tempo reference, like Live's metronome. 8.3.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.3.3 112 MIDI Loop/Region These controls manage how the contents of a MIDI clip are played and shown in the MIDI Editor. They work the same way as those for audio clips. In the MIDI Editor, the zoom/scroll area is located above the beat-time ruler, the scrub area just below. 8.4 Clip Defaults and Update Rate You can change the rate at which Live applies your Clip View settings to a running clip.
113 Chapter 9 Tempo Control and Warping Unlike music stored on tape or in a traditional digital audio workstation, the music in Live remains elastic at all times. Live is capable of time-warping samples while streaming them from disk so as to synchronize them to the current Live Set's tempo. This happens without affecting the pitch, which can be changed independently. Mixing and matching audio from different origins is therefore extremely easy. 9.1 9.1.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 114 point. Setting one knob to control coarse tempo in BPM and another to control ne tempo in hundredths of a BPM allows for enough precision to adjust to live performers or other unsynchronized sources. 9.1.2 Tapping the Tempo The Tap Button. You can use Live's Tap Tempo function to set the tempo at any time. As you click the Control Bar's Tap Tempo button once every beat, the tempo of the Live Set will follow your tapping. The Key Map Mode Switch.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 115 The Sample Box's Warping Controls. The most signi cant control here is the Warp switch, which toggles a clip's warping on or off. The Warp section of Live's Preferences will determine the default warp settings for new clips, but they can always be overridden here on a per-clip basis. When the Warp switch is off, Live plays the sample at its original, normal tempo, irrespective of the current Live Set's tempo.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 116 This is achieved by adding tempo automation to the Master track for the duration of the tempo master clip. You will notice that the Tempo eld in Live's Control Bar becomes disabled in this state; this is because all tempo control is handed over to the tempo master clip. When toggling a clip's Master/Slave switch, or when deleting a clip that was set as tempo master, the Master track tempo automation is removed again, restoring the proper tempo to the region.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 117 helpful to vertically resize the Sample Display by dragging on the split line between the Clip View and the Session View track area. The Follow Switch in the Control Bar. Saving Warp Markers Your Warp Markers will automatically be saved with the Live Set, but you may also want to save them with the sample le itself, so that they are reconstructed anytime you drag the le into Live. To do this, click the Clip View's Save button.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 118 A One-Bar Loop as It Appears in the Clip View, by Default. The Orig. BPM eld displays Live's guess of the loop's tempo; if you happen to know the tempo of the loop, you can type it in here. Sometimes Live's guess of the original tempo is wrong by half or double. If so, correct this by clicking on the buttons labeled *2 and :2, respectively.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 119 Setting the Warp Markers for a Poorly Cut Loop. Syncing Odd-Length Loops If you import a sample that contains a seven-bar loop, Live initially assumes the loop is eight bars long (or four, depending on its length) and plays it out of sync. For correct playback, the last marker needs to show an eight, not a nine. To achieve this do the following: 1. Double-click on the last Warp Marker to delete it. 2. Double-click on the eight to create a new Warp Marker. 3.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 120 Manipulating Grooves You can now create any number of Warp Markers by double-clicking on one of the numeric grid markers. Drag in a straight looped sample, set a few Warp Markers, and move them around to see what happens. Warp Markers really serve two purposes: 1. to provide a correct interpretation of the ow of musical time in the sample; 2. to mess up the ow of time in the sample.
121 CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING Record/Warp/Launch Preferences). Note that, for the auto-warp mechanism to work, les which are being imported into the program for the rst time will need to undergo a rst-time analysis process and will not be immediately available for playing or editing. As explained in the section in this manual on analysis les, analysis can be batch-processed with the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu's Analyze Audio command.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 122 Using the Context Menu to Direct Auto-Warp. Directing Auto-Warp is also relatively simple when you have imported a perfectly cut loop. You can tell Auto-Warp to work accordingly using the Warp As ...-Bar Loop command. Live will propose a loop length that makes the most sense given the current Live Set's tempo. Decreasing the Live Set's tempo can, for instance, lead Live to assume the loop is 8 bars at 90 BPM instead of 16 bars at 180 BPM.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 123 2. Use the Control Bar's Tap Tempo button to tap along, thereby setting the Live Set's tempo to match that of the clip; 3. Turn warping on again and use the Warp From Here (Start At ...) command to tell Auto-Warp to use your tapped tempo as a reference. Warp From Here (Straight) tells Auto-Warp that this is a clip with no tempo variations (common in electronically produced works).
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 124 Three Selected Warp Markers. Here are the steps: 1. Select the Warp Markers that you wish to copy by clicking on them with the mouse. After the rst Warp Marker has been selected, hold while clicking another to select the range of Warp Markers in between, or Ctrl (PC) / (Mac)-click to add individual Warp Markers to your selection. 2. Once your selection is complete, choose the Copy command from the Edit menu. 3.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 125 the sample (the grains ). The warp modes differ in the selection of grains, as well as in the details of overlapping and crossfading between grains. Let's investigate which warp modes work best for different types of signals and how to adjust the warping controls for clean stretching. It's also fun to misuse these controls to achieve interesting artifacts instead of accurate stretching. 9.3.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 126 The Grain Size control determines the grain size used, but unlike in Tones Mode, this is a setting that Live will use unaltered, without considering the signal's characteristics. Fluctuation introduces randomness into the process. Larger values give more randomness. 9.3.4 Re-Pitch Mode In Re-Pitch Mode, Live doesn't really time-stretch or compress the music; instead, it adjusts the playback rate to create the desired amount of stretching.
127 Chapter 10 Editing MIDI Notes and Velocities A MIDI clip in Live contains notes and controller data for playing a virtual instrument in a MIDI track's device chain. The MIDI clip provides the device with a musical score to play, specifying note pitch, length, position and dynamics (referred to as velocity in the MIDI lexicon). MIDI is composed and edited in Live's MIDI Editor. 10.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 10.2 128 The MIDI Editor To bring up the MIDI Editor, double-click a MIDI clip to open the Clip View. You can use the Clip View Box selector to make sure the Notes box is showing, then click in the title bar of the Notes box to bring up the MIDI Editor on the right-hand side of the screen. The MIDI Editor. The MIDI Editor is comprised of two editing windows: the upper Note Editor and the lower Velocity Editor.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 129 Previewing MIDI Notes. Provided your MIDI track's device chain contains an instrument, activating the Preview switch in the MIDI Editor allows you to hear notes as you select and move them. Note velocity is adjusted in the Velocity Editor, by clicking and dragging on the associated markers. You can also use Draw Mode in the Velocity Editor: It will draw identical velocities for all notes within a grid tile.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 130 a time ruler, which shows note position along a musical timeline. The vertical axis contains both the note ruler, displaying octaves C0 C10, and a representation of a piano keyboard (the piano roll). Note that if the Preview switch at the top of the piano roll is activated, you can listen to the results of your piano roll playing. 2 1 3 5 6 MIDI Editor Navigation. 1. To smoothly change the time-zoom level, click and drag vertically in the time ruler.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 131 in and out, drag up and down. 6. Change the length of what is shown in the Editor by dragging the left or right edges of the outline in the Clip Overview. 7. To quickly change what is shown in the Editor, click on a section that you want to examine in the Clip Overview, then drag downwards to zoom in, or scroll by dragging left and right. 8. The Page Up and Page Down keys on your computer keyboard scroll the Note Editor vertically.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 132 Enlarge the MIDI Editor by Dragging the Window Split Between Session and Clip Views. 10.4 Editing MIDI 10.4.1 Non-Destructive Editing You can always return your MIDI clip to its previous state by using the Edit menu's Undo command. Furthermore, if the MIDI clip being edited originated in a MIDI le on your hard drive, none of your editing will alter the original MIDI le, as Live incorporates its contents into your Live Set when importing. 10.4.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 133 When editing MIDI, you might nd that you want to change which part of the clip you are listening to, or loop the clip in order to listen to it repeatedly. You can use the loop/region markers for this. Use the Loop/Region Markers to Select a Speci c Region of the Clip to Play. 10.4.3 Grid Snapping Most functions in the MIDI Editor are subject to grid snapping.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 134 or downward to enclose the notes in the dotted line that appears. You can use the modi er to click and add individual notes or additional rubberband selections to your current selection. You can also remove a single note from your selection by holding down and clicking on it. Holding and clicking on the piano roll selects all notes in a single key track. There are two options for quantizing MIDI notes in Live.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 135 The Edit menu's Select Loop command selects all notes that begin within the loop brace. The Select Loop command can also be executed without the menu by simply clicking the loop brace. This command can speed up editing when coupled with the loop brace's shortcuts. Let's say you have arranged a nice 1-bar loop in the Note editor, and you want to duplicate it a couple of times.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 10.4.6 136 Changing Note Length Clicking and dragging on a note's left or right edges changes its length. Note length can only be changed when Draw Mode is inactive, and will be quantized unless the Alt (PC) / (Mac) modi er is held down while dragging. Changing Note Length. Tip: To set a group of notes to the same length, select them all, grab the end of the longest one, drag them all down to zero length and then extend them.
137 CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES lines unless the grid is not shown, or the dragging. Alt (PC) / (Mac) modi er is held while If one marker is dragged beyond the boundary of the other, then the order of the stretched notes will be re ected in relation to their initial sequence; this is sometimes referred to as retrograde behavior. Any changes occurring to the notes included in the Note Stretch before the mouse button is released will cancel the stretch operation.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 138 modi er is held. To draw markers individually (as you would want to with a crescendo, 4 (PC) / 4 (Mac) shortcut, or for instance) deactivate grid snapping with the Ctrl simply hold down the Alt (PC) / (Mac) modi er. Drawing Identical Velocities (Left) and a Crescendo (Right).
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 139 The Velocity Editor Showing Note-Off Velocities. Please note that note-off (or release ) velocity is a somewhat esoteric parameter, and is only supported by certain devices. Ableton's Sampler instrument, for example, provides note-off velocity as a controller for a variety of parameters. 10.4.8 Deactivating Notes (PC) / Ctrl To deactivate, or mute, a note (or notes) in the MIDI Editor, select it and (Mac) to access the context menu.
140 Chapter 11 Launching Clips The Live Session View is set apart by the fact that it gives you, the musician, a spontaneous environment that encourages performance and improvisation. An important part of how you take advantage of the Session View lies within how you con gure your various Session View clips. This chapter explains the group of settings used to de ne how each Session View clip behaves when triggered, or launched. 11.
CHAPTER 11. LAUNCHING CLIPS 141 Use the Clip View Box Selector to Bring up the Launch Box. Note that you can edit the launch settings of more than one clip at the same time by rst selecting the clips and then opening the Clip View. 11.2 Launch Modes The Clip Launch Mode Chooser. The Launch Mode chooser offers a number of options for how clips behave with respect to mouse clicks, computer keyboard actions or MIDI notes: Trigger: down starts the clip; up is ignored.
CHAPTER 11. LAUNCHING CLIPS 11.3 142 Clip-Level Quantization The Clip Quantization Chooser. The Clip Quantization chooser lets you adjust an onset timing correction for clip triggering. To disable clip quantization, choose None. To use the Control Bar's Global Quantization setting, choose Global. Global quantization 6 (PC) / 6 (Mac), 7 , 8 , 9 and 0 can be quickly changed using the Ctrl shortcuts.
CHAPTER 11. LAUNCHING CLIPS 143 The Velocity Amount control allows you to adjust the effect of MIDI note velocity on the clip's volume: If set to zero, there is no in uence; at 100 percent, the softest notes play the clip silently. For more on playing clips via MIDI, see the respective section. 11.5 Legato Mode The Legato Mode Switch. Suppose you have gathered, in one track, a number of looping clips, and you now want to toggle among them without losing the sync.
CHAPTER 11. LAUNCHING CLIPS 144 same group after the clip plays. A group is de ned by clips arranged in successive slots of the same track. Tracks can have an unlimited number of groups, separated by empty slots. 1 2 The Follow Action Controls. 3 1. The Follow Action Time control de nes when the Follow Action takes place in bars-beats-sixteenths from the point in the clip where play starts. The default for this setting is one bar. 2.
CHAPTER 11. LAUNCHING CLIPS 145 in a group, this Follow Action triggers the rst clip. Play First Clip launches the rst (top) clip in a group. Play Last Clip launches the last (bottom) clip in a group. Play Any Clip plays any clip in the group. Play Other Clip is similar to Play Any Clip, but as long as the current clip is not alone in the group, no clip will play consecutively. There is also the possibility to have no Follow Action by selecting No Action, or leaving the chooser blank.
CHAPTER 11. LAUNCHING CLIPS 146 2 3 Creating a Group With the Two Clips. 3. Set up Follow Actions for the rst clip. You will want to make Follow Action Time equal to the clip's length. Set the Follow Action A chooser to Play Next Clip, with a Chance setting of 1, leaving Follow Action B alone. Now this clip is set up to advance to the looping clip after it plays. 4. Activate the Loop switch for the second clip.
CHAPTER 11. LAUNCHING CLIPS 147 The default setting for Follow Action is actually a 1:0 chance that Nothing happens after the Follow Action Time, which means that there is effectively no Follow Action. But now, imagine a group consisting of one single clip. Follow Action A is set to Play Clip Again, with a Chance of 8. Follow Action B is set to None, with a Chance of 1. The clip uses a long sample, and Follow Time is set to one bar.
CHAPTER 11. LAUNCHING CLIPS 11.6.5 148 Mixing up Melodies and Beats You can let Follow Actions perform unpredictable remixes and solos for you: Use a clip containing a beat or melody, and copy it so that there are several instances of it forming a group. Alternatively, you can use several different beats or melodies that you want to mix together. The start and end for each clip can be set differently, as can clip envelopes and other clip settings.
149 Chapter 12 Routing and I/O In the context of Live, routing is the setup of the tracks' signal sources and destinations (i.e., their inputs and outputs). Most routing happens in the mixer's track In/Out section, which offers, for every track, choosers to select a signal source and destination. The mixer's In/Out section is Live's patchbay. The In/Out section can be independently shown or hidden from the Session and Arrangement Views.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 150 The Mixer's In/Out Section and Mixer Section Selectors. For every track (except the Master), the In/Out section has the same layout: The upper chooser pair ( Audio/MIDI From ) selects the track's input. Audio tracks have an audio input, and MIDI tracks have a MIDI input. Return tracks receive their input from the respective sends. The Monitor radio button selects the monitor mode: the conditions under which the track's input is heard through the track.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 151 track's output, via the track's device chain. If the track's output is set to Master, you can hear the guitar signal, processed by whatever effects are used (and delayed by whatever latency the audio hardware interface incurs), over your speakers.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 12.2 152 External Audio In/Out An audio interface's inputs are selected by choosing Ext. In from the Input Type chooser of an audio track. The Input Channel chooser then offers the individual input channels. Entries in this chooser each have meters next to their names to help you identify signal presence and overload (when the meter ashes red). Setting up the audio interface's outputs works the same way via the output chooser pair.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 153 the case with audio inputs, the Input Channel chooser also has meters next to every entry to represent activity on the respective input channel. 12.3.1 The MIDI Ports List in the Preferences The MIDI Ports List in the Preferences. You can con gure which MIDI ports are made available to Live using the MIDI Ports section of the MIDI/Sync Preferences. All available input and output ports are listed here.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 154 the Impulse percussion sampler's sample slots. This means that you can play and record drum patterns right off the computer keyboard. Note that when the computer MIDI keyboard is activated, it will steal keys that may have otherwise been assigned to remote-control elements of the Live interface. To prevent this, you can turn the computer MIDI keyboard off when it is not needed. 12.3.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 155 The Resampling option in any audio track's Input Type chooser will route the Master output to that track. You can then decide on what exactly you will be resampling and mute, solo or otherwise adjust the tracks that are feeding the Master output. You will probably want to use the Master Volume meter to make sure that your level is as high as possible without clipping (indicated by red in the meter). Then you can arm the track and record into any of its empty clip slots.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 156 Two Ways to Route Track A into Track B. Both approaches result in Track A's output being fed into Track B. Approach 1 leaves Track B's in/out settings alone, and we can, at any time, add more tracks that feed their output into Track B. This is the method of choice for many-to-one routings such as submixes or several MIDI tracks playing the same instrument. In this scenario, soloing Track B will still allow you to hear the output of the tracks that are feeding it.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 157 Tap Points for Track Routing. Pre FX taps the signal that is coming directly from a track, before it has been passed on to the track's device chains (FX) or mixer. Therefore, changes that are made to the tapped track's devices or mixer have no effect on the tapped signal. Soloing a track that taps another track Pre FX will allow you to hear the tapped track.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 158 Routing Points in Racks Tap Points for Every Chain in a Track. If a track has one or more Instrument or Effect Racks in its device chain, internal routing points (Pre FX, Post FX and Post Mixer) will also be available for every chain within the Rack. If a track contains one or more Drum Racks, internal routing points will be available for any of the Rack's return chains.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 12.5.2 159 Making Use of Internal Routing This section presents several internal routing examples in more detail. Post-Effects Recording Let's say that you are feeding a guitar into Live, building up a song track by track, overlaying take onto take. It is certainly powerful to have a separate effects chain per track for applying different effects to different takes after the fact.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 160 Recording MIDI as Audio When working with MIDI and complex software instruments, it is sometimes more useful to record the resulting audio than the incoming MIDI. A single MIDI note can prompt, for example, Native Instruments' Absynth to produce something that sounds more like a piece of music than a single tone. This output lends itself more to representation as an audio waveform than a single note in a MIDI clip, particularly when comparing the editing options.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 161 Creating Submixes Submixing the Individual Drums of a Drum Kit. Suppose we have the individual drums of a drum kit coming in on separate tracks for multitrack recording. In the mix, we can easily change the volumes of the individual drums, but adjusting the volume of the entire drum kit against the rest of the music is less convenient. Therefore, we add a new audio track to submix the individual drums.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 162 Feeding an Additional MIDI Track Into an Existing MIDI Track to Reuse its Instrument. This is accomplished by setting the new MIDI track's Output Type chooser to Pad. Note that the Output Channel chooser now offers a selection of destinations: We can either feed the new track's output into the input of the pad track, or we can directly address the Simpler.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 163 switch) also mutes the other MIDI track. To be precise, the other track keeps playing, but its MIDI is played by an instrument that is out of the mix. This can be easily remedied by cutting the clips from the pad track and pasting them into a third track that can be independently muted (and that can hold its own MIDI effects). The original pad track now acts as a mere instrument container.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 164 Notice that routing an individual output from Impulse into another track automatically takes this signal out of Impulse's own internal mix. This convenience is not standard behavior of most plug-in instruments, however. Soloing a track that taps one of Impulse's sample slots will still allow you to hear the output of that slot. Using Multi-Timbral Plug-In Instruments Many plug-in instruments support multi-timbral operation.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 165 Feeding Sidechain Inputs Some effects have so-called sidechain inputs. A vocoder, for instance, imposes spectral characteristics taken from one signal (say, spoken word) onto another signal, for instance a string pad. The vocoder is inserted as an audio effect into the string track. It has a sidechain input for the speech signal, which has to be delivered from another track.
CHAPTER 12. ROUTING AND I/O 166 Using an Auxiliary MIDI Track to Layer Instruments. Perhaps you wonder why this works, given that the string track's output is audio and not MIDI. When routing MIDI in from another track, we are tapping the MIDI at the latest possible stage, which is after any MIDI Effects, and just before the instrument.
167 Chapter 13 Mixing 13.1 The Live Mixer Live includes a mixer section that is accessible from two views: The Arrangement View Mixer. In the Arrangement View, the mixer appears as a horizontal strip to the right of the track button next to area.
CHAPTER 13. MIXING 168 its name, and adjust its height accordingly. The Session View Mixer. The Session View is a standard vertical mixer layout. You'll likely nd the Session View mixer more intuitive than the Arrangement mixer, which comes in handy when you work with automation. Note that the Tab key toggles between the Arrangement and Session Views. The View menu options listed below show or hide mixer components.
169 CHAPTER 13. MIXING The Mixer Section Selectors. Let's look at the mixer controls: 5 6 4 3 1 2 4 5 1 6 2 3 The Mixer Controls. 1. The Meter shows the track's RMS (average) and peak output level. While monitoring, however, it shows the input level. 2. The Volume control adjusts the track's output level. 3. The Pan control positions the track's output in the stereo eld. To reset the Pan control to center, click on its associated triangle. 4.
CHAPTER 13. MIXING 170 option enabled, inserting an instrument into a new or empty MIDI track will automatically arm the track. 13.1.1 Session Mixer Features The Session Mixer's Possibilities. The Mixer section of the Session Mixer has several additional features that are not visible by default. The mixer is resizable, and dragging upwards on the top of the mixer will extend the height of the track meters, adding tick marks, a numeric volume eld and resettable peak level indicators.
CHAPTER 13. MIXING 171 Nevertheless, Live provides this optional visual feedback for signals that travel beyond 0 dB in any track. 13.2 Audio and MIDI Tracks Audio and MIDI tracks in Live are for hosting and playing clips, as explained earlier. You can add up to 64 audio and unlimited MIDI tracks to your Live Set's mixer using the appropriate Insert menu commands.
CHAPTER 13. MIXING 13.3 172 Return Tracks and the Master Track In addition to tracks that play clips, a Live Set has a Master track and up to two return tracks; these cannot play clips, but allow for more exible signal processing and routing. The return tracks and the Master track occupy the right-hand side of the Session mixer view and the bottom end of the Arrangement View. Note that you can hide and show the return tracks using the Returns command in the View menu.
CHAPTER 13. MIXING 173 can be used to set up a separate monitor mix for an individual musician in a band. The Master track is the default destination for the signals from all other tracks. Drag effects here to process the mixed signal before it goes to the master output. Effects in the Master track usually provide mastering-related functions, such as compression and/or EQ.
174 CHAPTER 13. MIXING Choose from Seven Crossfader Curves. The chart below details the power level and response of each crossfader curve. A+B Power Level Crossfader Response Transition Dipped Intermediate Constant Power Slow Fade Slow Cut Fast Cut The crossfader can be mapped to any continuous MIDI controller (absolute or incremental). In addition to the crossfader's central slider, its absolute left and right positions are separately available for MIDI or keyboard mapping.
CHAPTER 13. MIXING 175 right) will toggle the crossfader's absolute left and right positions. Mapping to two of the three elds allows for a snapping back behavior when one of the assigned keys is held down and the other is pressed and released. Crossfade Assign Buttons. Each track has two Crossfade Assign buttons, A and B. The track can have three states with respect to the crossfader: If neither Assign button is on, the crossfader does not affect the track at all.
176 CHAPTER 13. MIXING 13.5 Soloing and Cueing By default, soloing a track simply mutes all other tracks (except in some cases where tracks are feeding other tracks). The signal from the soloed tracks is heard through their respective outputs, with the pan setting of each track preserved. Soloing a clip track leaves any return tracks audible, provided that the Solo in Place option is enabled in the Solo button's context menu ( (PC) / Ctrl (Mac)).
177 CHAPTER 13. MIXING 2. The Cue Out chooser selects the output on your hardware interface to be used for cueing. This has to be set to an output other than that selected for the Master. If the desired outputs don't show up in these choosers, please check the Audio Preferences. 3. Activate cueing by setting the Solo/Cue Mode switch to Cue. 4. The tracks' Solo switches are now replaced by Cue switches with headphone icons.
CHAPTER 13. MIXING 178 Note that delay compensation for plug-ins and Live devices is a separate feature, and is automatic by default. Unusually high Track Delay settings or reported latencies from plugins may cause noticeable sluggishness in the software. If you are having latency-related dif culties while recording and playing back instruments, you may want to try turning off device delay compensation, however this is not normally recommended.
179 Chapter 14 Recording New Clips This chapter is about recording new clips from audio and MIDI input signals. Note that this is a different kind of recording than the capturing of Session clips into the Arrangement. For successful audio recording, please make sure the audio preferences are set up properly. For more on this, please see the built-in program lesson on setting up Audio Preferences.
CHAPTER 14. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 180 The Track In/Out Section in the Arrangement (Left) and Session View (Right). Audio tracks default to recording a stereo signal from the external input pair 1/2. MIDI tracks default to recording all MIDI that is coming in through the active external input devices. The computer keyboard is, by default, activated as a pseudo-MIDI input device, allowing you to record MIDI even if no MIDI controller hardware is currently available.
181 CHAPTER 14. RECORDING NEW CLIPS Clicking one track's Arm button unarms all other tracks unless the Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi er is held. Arming a track selects the track so you can readily access its devices in the Track View. 14.3 Recording Recording can be done in both the Session and the Arrangement Views. If you want to record onto more than one track simultaneously and/or prefer viewing the recording linearly and in-progress, the Arrangement View may be the better choice.
CHAPTER 14. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 182 2. Recording creates new clips in all tracks that have their Arm button on. 3. When the Overdub switch is on, the new clips contain a mix of the signal already in the track and the new input signal. The Overdub option only applies to MIDI tracks. 4. To prevent recording prior to a punch-in point, activate the Punch-In switch. This is useful for protecting the parts of a track that you do not want to record over and allows you to set up a pre-roll or warm-up time.
183 CHAPTER 14. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 4 3 2 1 Recording a New Clip Into the Session View. 1. Set the Global Quantization chooser to any value other than None to obtain correctly cut clips. 2. Activate the Arm button for the tracks onto which you want to record. Clip Record buttons will appear in the empty slots of the armed tracks. 3. Click on any of the Clip Record buttons to commence recording. A new clip will appear in the slot with a red Clip Launch button that shows it is currently recording.
CHAPTER 14. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 14.3.3 184 Overdub Recording MIDI Patterns Live makes pattern-oriented recording of drums and the like quite easy. Using Live's Impulse instrument and the following technique, you can successively build up drum patterns while listening to the result. Or, using an instrument such as Simpler, which allows for chromatic playing, you can build up melodies or harmonies, note by note. 1. Set the Global Quantization chooser to one bar. 2.
CHAPTER 14. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 14.4 185 Recording in Sync Live keeps the audio and MIDI you have recorded in sync, even when you later decide on a different song tempo. In fact, Live allows you to change the tempo at any time before, after and even during recording. You could, for instance, cheat a bit by turning down the tempo to record a technically dif cult part, and pull it up again afterwards. It is important to record in sync to make sure everything will later play in sync. The Metronome Switch.
CHAPTER 14. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 14.5 186 Recording Quantized MIDI Notes If you will be recording MIDI, you have the option of automatically quantizing MIDI notes while recording. The Record Quantization chooser in the Edit menu allows selecting the meter subdivisions with which your recorded notes will align. When recording into Session slots or into the Arrangement, record quantization is an independent step in Live's Undo history.
CHAPTER 14. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 14.7 187 Setting up File Types The following Preferences from the Record/Warp/Launch tab are relevant to the sample les that are created by recording: The sample le type you would like Live to create can be chosen from the File Type chooser in the Record/Warp/Launch Preferences. The bit depth of the sample le you will create by recording can be chosen from the Bit Depth chooser in the Record/Warp/Launch Preferences.
CHAPTER 14. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 188 The Scene Up/Down Buttons. One key is used to jump to the next scene... A Track Launch Button. ... and another key to start and end recording in the respective track.
189 Chapter 15 Working with Instruments and Effects Every track in Live can host a number of devices. These devices can be of three different sorts: MIDI effects act upon MIDI signals and can only be placed in MIDI tracks. Audio effects act upon audio signals and can be placed in audio tracks. They can also be placed in MIDI tracks as long as they are downstream from an instrument. Instruments are devices that reside in MIDI tracks, receive MIDI and output audio.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 190 Devices in the Track View. To save space in the Track View, a device can be collapsed by double-clicking on its title bar or by choosing Fold from its (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu. Devices Can Be Folded. To learn about a particular device and how to operate it, consult the Live Audio Effect Reference, Live MIDI Effect Reference or the Live Instrument Reference.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 15.1 191 Using the Live Devices The Live Device Browser. Click on the Device Browser selector to access the palette of Live's built-in devices. You will notice that MIDI effects, audio effects and instruments each have their own folders in the Browser. The easiest way to place a device in a track is to double-click on it in the Browser, which creates a new track to hold the device.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 192 MIDI and Audio Track Arm Buttons This is how you would play live instruments through effects on a track, for example, or use a MIDI keyboard's input to play a track's instrument. Note that you can easily move from this setup into recording new clips for further use in Live. If you have alternative monitoring preferences, please see the Monitoring section to learn how to make these settings.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 193 A MIDI Track's Device Chain Can Contain All Three Device Types. To remove a device from the chain, click on its title bar and press your computer's or Delete key, or select Delete from the Edit menu. To change the order of devices, drag a device by its title bar and drop it next to any of the other devices in the Track View. Devices can be moved to other tracks entirely by dragging them from the Track View into the Session or Arrangement Views.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 194 The Level Meters Between Devices in a Chain. Note that no clipping can occur between devices because there is practically unlimited headroom. Clipping can occur when an overly strong signal is sent to a physical output or written to a sample le. Further information about track types in Live can be found in the Routing and I/O chapter, including information on using return tracks to distribute the effect of a single device amongst several tracks.
195 CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS Presets in the Device Browser. You can browse and load presets quickly with the computer keyboard: Scroll up and down using the and Close and open device folders using the Press Return keys. and keys. to load a device or preset. The Hot-Swap Presets Button. Clicking a device's Hot-Swap Presets button will temporarily link the Browser to a device, calling up its presets in the Device Browser.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 196 Saving Presets You can create and save any number of your own presets in the Device Browser. The Save Preset Button. Click the Save Preset button to save a device's current settings (including any custom info text) as a new preset. You will be redirected to the Browser, where you can press Return to use Live's suggested name, or you can type one of your own.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 197 To save the current settings of a device as a default preset, open the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu on the device's header and select Save as Default Preset. This works for all of Live's instruments, MIDI effects and audio effects (including the various types of Racks). If you have already saved a default preset for a particular device, Live will ask you before overwriting it.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 198 The Plug-In Device Browser. Audio Units and VST Plug-ins are browsed and imported using the Plug-In Device Browser, which is accessed via its selector. Plug-in instruments can be differentiated from plug-in effects in the Browser, as they appear with a keyboard icon. The Browser's search functionality is only available for Audio Units Plug-ins, as is loading presets directly from Track View devices via the Hot-Swap button.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 199 You can also rescan if you believe that your plug-in database has somehow become corrupted. Holding down the Alt (PC) / Alt (Mac) modi er while pressing Rescan will delete your plug-in database altogether and run a clean scan of your plug-ins. 15.2.1 Plug-Ins in the Track View A VST Plug-In in the Track View. Once a plug-in is dragged from the Browser into a track, it will show up in the Track View.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 200 Once a plug-in is placed in a track, you can use it just like a Live device: You can edit all of its parameters and drag it to different locations in the device chain or to other tracks, according to the rules of audio effects and instruments. You can map MIDI controller messages to its parameters. You can modulate its continuous parameters with clip envelopes.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 201 Alt P You can use the View menu's Show/Hide Plug-In Windows command or the Ctrl Alt P (Mac) shortcut to hide and show your open plug-in windows. Notice (PC) / that the name of the track to which the plug-in belongs is displayed in the title bar of the plug-in editor window. Macintosh only: The oating editor windows of some VST Plug-ins do not receive computer key strokes. This is generally an implementation error in the plug-in itself.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 202 have to tell Live about the location of the VST Plug-in folder containing the devices you want to use. In order to set up your VST sources, press the Activate button in the Plug-In , (PC) / , Device Browser, or open the File/Folder Preferences by pressing Ctrl (Mac). There you will nd the Active Sources section. Setting up VST Plug-In Sources for Windows. For Windows, proceed as follows: 1.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 203 and local directories: /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST. You can turn Live's use of these plug-ins on or off with the Use VST Plug-ins in System Folders option. 2. You may have an alternative folder in which you store your VST Plug-ins (perhaps those that you use only with Live). You can use VST Plug-ins in this folder in addition to, or instead of, those in the System folders.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 204 The VST Plug-In Program Chooser. To select a program from the plug-in's bank, use the chooser below the title bar. The number of programs per bank is xed. You are always working in the currently selected program, that is, all changes to the plug-in's controls become part of the selected program.
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 15.4 205 Audio Units Plug-Ins Audio Units Plug-ins are only available in Mac OS X. In most respects, they operate just like VST Plug-ins. An Audio Units Plug-In. The rst time you open Live, Audio Units Plug-ins will not appear in the Plug-In Device Browser. In order to activate your Audio Units as a plug-in source, please press the Activate button in the Plug-In Device Browser, or go to the File/Folder Preferences by pressing Ctrl , (PC) / , (Mac).
CHAPTER 15. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 206 Opening an Audio Units Plug-In Window. Audio Units have presets that function just like those for the Live effects. However, some AU presets cannot be dragged to different locations in the Browser, as they are read-only. Audio Units presets have an .aupreset extension and are stored in the following directory according to their manufacturer's name: [Home]/Library/Audio/Presets/[Manufacturer Name]/[Plug-in Name] 15.
207 Chapter 16 Instrument, Drum and Effect Racks A Rack is a exible tool for working with effects, plug-ins and instruments in a track's device chain. Racks can be used to build complex signal processors, dynamic performance instruments, stacked synthesizers and more. Yet they also streamline your device chain by bringing together your most essential controls.
CHAPTER 16. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 16.1 An Overview of Racks 16.1.1 Signal Flow and Parallel Device Chains 208 Inside An Audio Effect Rack (As It Appears in the Full Version of Live). In any of Live's tracks, devices are connected serially in a device chain, passing their signals from one device to the next, left to right. By default, the Track View displays only a single chain, but there is actually no limit to the number of chains contained within a track.
CHAPTER 16. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 16.1.2 209 Macro Controls The Macro Controls. One unique property of Racks are their Macro Controls. The Macro Controls are a bank of eight knobs, each capable of addressing any number of parameters from any devices in a Rack.
CHAPTER 16. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 16.2.1 210 Pad View Pad View (As It Appears in the Full Version of Live). The Pad View is unique to Drum Racks and offers an easy way to map and manipulate samples and devices. Each pad represents one of the 128 available MIDI notes. The pad overview to the right shifts the set of visible pads up or down in octave increments, either by dragging the view selector to a new area or by using your computer keyboard's and keys.
CHAPTER 16. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 211 Pad View excels as a performance interface, particularly when triggered by a hardware control surface with pads. If your pad controller is one of Ableton's natively supported control surfaces, simply select it as a control surface in the MIDI/Sync tab of Live's Preferences. From then on, as long as you have a Drum Rack on a track that's receiving MIDI, your pad controller will trigger the pads that are visible on your screen.
CHAPTER 16. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 212 Mixing Rack Chains in the Session View. Chains in the Session View mixer look similar to tracks, but they have no clip slots. Additionally, opening the Mixer's In/Out section allows for some additional editing possibilities: Input/Output Controls. The Receive chooser sets the incoming MIDI note to which the drum chain will respond. The list shows note names, MIDI note numbers and standard GM drum equivalents.
CHAPTER 16. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 213 Rack contains them, the Audio To chooser in the mixer for return chains allows you to route a return chain's output to either the main output of the Rack or directly to the return tracks of the Set. In Drum Racks that are nested within other Drum Racks, both drum chains and return chains can route upwards to the returns of any of the Drum Racks that contain them.
214 Chapter 17 Automation and Editing Envelopes Often, when working with Live's mixer and devices, you will want the controls' movements to become part of the music. The movement of a control across the song timeline is called automation; a control whose value changes in the course of this timeline is automated. Practically all mixer and device controls in Live can be automated, including the song tempo. 17.
CHAPTER 17. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 215 Volume, Pan and the Track Activator Switch Have Been Automated. 17.2 Deleting Automation To delete automation data, (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) on an automated control to open its context menu and select Delete Automation. The automation LED disappears, and the control's value stays constant across the entire song. You can also delete automation by editing breakpoint envelopes. 17.
216 CHAPTER 17. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 2. You can click on it to reactivate all automation and thereby return to the automation state as it is written on tape. 17.4 Drawing and Editing Automation In the Arrangement View, automation curves can be viewed and edited as breakpoint envelopes. 3 5 8 1 4 6 2 Automation Envelopes in the Arrangement View. 7 1. To show a track's envelopes, unfold the track by clicking the to the track name. button next 2.
CHAPTER 17. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 217 which devices actually have automation by showing an LED next to their labels. You can make things clearer still by selecting Show Automated Parameters Only from the bottom of the chooser. 5. The Automation Control chooser selects a control from the device chosen in the Automation Device chooser. The labels of automated controls have an LED. Once an envelope has been selected on the track, several new buttons appear: 6.
CHAPTER 17. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 218 Drawing an Envelope. Drawing creates steps as wide as the visible grid, which you can modify using a number of handy shortcuts. For freehand drawing, you can hide the grid using the Snap to Grid 4 (PC) / 4 (Mac) shortcut. To temporarily enable Options menu entry or the Ctrl freehand drawing while the grid is shown, hold down Alt (PC) / Alt (Mac) while drawing. 17.4.
CHAPTER 17. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 219 the modi er while dragging, which will eliminate breakpoints as you wipe over them. Holding down the Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi er while dragging switches to a ner resolution. Click and drag a line segment between two breakpoints to move it vertically, without affecting the breakpoint's horizontal position. If the line segment is in the current selection, the envelope is moved vertically across the selected timespan.
CHAPTER 17. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 17.4.4 220 Edit Menu Commands When working with automation data, the Edit menu commands behave differently depending on whether or not your selection is within the clip track or its automation lanes. To copy, cut, delete or duplicate automation from a track, independent of the associated clip, make sure the parameter you want to work with is in its own lane.
221 Chapter 18 Clip Envelopes Every clip in Live can have its own clip envelopes. The aspects of a clip that are in uenced by clip envelopes change depending upon clip type and setup; clip envelopes can do anything from representing MIDI controller data to modulating device parameters. In this chapter, we will rst look at how all clip envelopes are drawn and edited, and then get into the details of their various applications.
CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 18.1 222 The Clip Envelope Editor Use the Clip View Box Selector to Bring up the Envelopes Box. To work with clip envelopes, bring up the Clip View's Envelopes box by activating the rightmost Clip View Box selector panel. The Envelopes box contains two choosers for selecting an envelope to view and edit. The Clip View's Envelopes Box. The top menu is the Device chooser, which selects a general category of controls with which to work.
223 CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES The bottom menu, the Control chooser, selects among the controls of the item chosen in the top menu. In both choosers, parameters with altered clip envelopes appear with LEDs next to their names. You can simplify the appearance of these choosers by selecting Show Modulated Parameters Only from either of them. The quick-chooser buttons below the menus select commonly edited controls.
CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 224 clips, you can create an abundance of interesting variations from the same clip in real time anything from subtle corrections to entirely new and unrelated sounds. 18.2.1 Clip Envelopes are Non-Destructive Using clip envelopes, you can create new sounds from a sample without actually affecting the sample on disk. Because Live calculates the envelope modulations in real time, you can have hundreds of clips in a Live Set that all sound different, but use the same sample.
225 CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES The Transposition Envelope with Steps (Top) and Ramps (Bottom). Note that the warp settings determine how accurately Live's time-warping engine tracks the envelope shape. To obtain a more immediate response, reduce the Grain Size value in Tones and Texture Mode or choose a smaller value for the Transients control in Beats Mode.
CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 18.2.3 226 Muting or Attenuating Notes in a Sample Click on the Volume quick-chooser to access an audio clip's volume envelope. By drawing steps in Draw Mode or creating shapes with breakpoints, you can impose an arbitrary volume shape onto the sample. Imposing a Volume Envelope on a Sample. The volume envelope's output is interpreted as a relative percentage of the clip volume slider's current value.
CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 227 than centimeters: A vertical grid line is worth a sixteenth note of offset and the modulation can reach from plus eight sixteenths to minus eight sixteenths. Sample offset modulation is the tool of choice for quickly creating interesting variations of beat loops. We discourage using this technique for analytical cut-and-splice tasks; they are much easier to perform using Live's Arrangement View, and the results can easily be consolidated into new clips.
CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 18.3 228 Mixer and Device Clip Envelopes Clip envelopes can be used to modulate mixer and device controls. Since mixer and device controls can also be controlled by the Arrangement's automation envelopes, this is a potential source of confusion. However, clip envelopes differ from automation envelopes in one important way: Whereas automation envelopes de ne the value of a control at any given point in time, clip envelopes can only in uence this de ned value.
CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 229 percentage: The clip envelope cannot open the send further than the Send knob, but it can reduce the actual send value to minus in nite dB. 18.3.2 Modulating Pan The Pan envelope affects the mixer pan stage in a relative way: The pan knob's position determines the intensity of the modulation.
CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 230 while recording new clips: Names of controllers that already have clip envelopes appear with an adjacent LED in the Control chooser. Live supports most MIDI controller numbers up to 119, accessible via the scroll bar on the right side of the menu.
231 CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 2 1 4 3 1. Choose the Clip Volume envelope, and unlink it from the sample. The clip envelope's loop braces now appear colored to indicate this envelope now has its own local loop/region settings. The loop/region controls in the Envelopes box come to life. 2. Make sure the clip envelope's Loop switch is off. Notice the Sample box's Loop switch is not affected. The sample will keep looping although the envelope is now playing as a one-shot. 3.
CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 18.5.2 232 Creating Long Loops from Short Loops Let us take this a step further. For a different part of your set, you would like to use the same one-bar loop because it sounds great but its repetition bores you. You would like to somehow turn it into a longer loop. We depart from the clip we just set up to fade out over eight bars. Activate the clip volume envelope's Loop switch. Now, as you play the clip, you can hear the eight-bar fade-out repeating.
CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 18.5.3 233 Imposing Rhythm Patterns onto Samples So far, we have been talking about imposing long envelopes onto small loops. You can also think of interesting applications that work the other way around. Consider a sample of a song that is several minutes long. This sample could be played by a clip with a onebar volume envelope loop. The volume envelope loop now works as a pattern that is repeatedly punching holes into the music so as to, perhaps, remove every third beat.
234 Chapter 19 Live Audio Effect Reference Live comes with a selection of custom-designed, built-in audio effects. The Working with Instruments and Effects chapter explains the basics of using effects in Live. 19.1 Auto Filter The Auto Filter Effect. The Auto Filter effect provides classic analog lter emulation. It can be modulated by an envelope follower and/or an LFO to create moving lter effects.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 235 track either the ltered signal or an external sidechain source. There are four different lter types: lowpass, highpass, bandpass and notch. For each type, the X-Y controller adjusts frequency (to adjust, click and drag on the X-axis) and Q (also called resonance; to adjust, click and drag on the Y-axis). You can also click on the Freq and Q numeric displays and type in exact values.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 236 envelope follower and is never actually heard. The Auto Filter also contains a Low Frequency Oscillator to modulate lter frequency in a periodic fashion. The respective Amount control sets how much the LFO affects the lter. This can be used in conjunction with or instead of the envelope follower. The Rate control speci es the LFO speed. It can be set in terms of hertz, or synced to the song tempo, allowing for controlled rhythmic ltering.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.2 237 Auto Pan The Auto Pan Effect. Auto Pan offers LFO-driven manipulation of amplitude and panning for creating automatic panning, tremolo and amplitude modulation, and beat-synchronized chopping effects. Auto Pan's LFOs modulate the amplitude of the left and right stereo channels with sine, triangle, sawtooth down or random waveforms. The Shape control pushes the waveform to its upper and lower limits, hardening its shape.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.3 238 Beat Repeat The Beat Repeat Effect. Beat Repeat allows for the creation of controlled or randomized repetitions of an incoming signal. The Interval control de nes how often Beat Repeat captures new material and begins repeating it. Interval is synced to and set in terms of the song tempo, with values ranging from 1/32 to 4 Bars. The Offset control shifts the point de ned by Interval forward in time.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 239 create sonic artifacts. The No Triplets button sets grid division as binary. Grid size can be changed randomly using the Variation control. If Variation is set to 0 , grid size is xed. But when Variation is set to higher values, the grid uctuates considerably around the set Grid value.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.4 240 Chorus The Chorus Effect. The Chorus effect uses two parallel time-modulated delays to create chorus (thickening) and anging effects. Each delay has its own delay time control, calibrated in milliseconds. Delay 1 has a highpass lter that can remove low frequencies from the delayed signal. Greater highpass values let only very high frequencies pass through to Delay 1. Delay 2 can switch among three different modes. When off, only Delay 1 is audible.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 241 while the Polarity switch sets (surprise!) the polarity. Polarity changes have the most effect with high amounts of feedback and short delay times. The Dry/Wet control adjusts the balance between the processed and dry signals. Set it to 100 percent when using Chorus in a return track. Enabling the Crisp option via the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu can improve the sound quality, particularly at higher frequencies.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 242 Ratio: The Threshold slider sets where compression begins. Signals above the threshold are attenuated by an amount speci ed by the Ratio parameter, which sets the ratio between the input and output signal. For example, with a compression ratio of 3, if a signal above the threshold increases by 3 dB, the compressor output will increase by only 1 dB. If a signal above the threshold increases by 6 dB, then the output will increase by only 2 dB.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 243 operation after the signal falls below the threshold. A slight amount of attack time (10 50 ms) allows peaks to come through unprocessed, which helps preserve dynamics by accentuating the initial portion of the signal. If these peaks cause overloads, you can try shortening the attack time, but extremely short times take the life out of the signal, and may lead to a slight buzziness caused by distortion.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 244 model, which analyzes the output of the device and then self-adjusts its compression behavior. Because feedback compressors analyze signals that have already been compressed, their Attack and Release parameters are a bit less precise, and act more like suggestions to the compressor. But feedback compression generally results in a much smoother sound, with less overall gain reduction but also less potential for distortion artifacts.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 245 With Dry/Wet at 100%, the compressor is triggered entirely by the sidechain source. At 0%, the sidechain is effectively bypassed. Note that increasing the gain does not increase the volume of the source signal in the mix. The sidechain audio is only a trigger for the compressor and is never actually heard. Note that FB mode and automatic Makeup are not available when using external sidechain.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 246 Sidechaining in Dance Music Sidechaining/ducking is a dance music producer's secret weapon because it can help to ensure that basslines (or even whole mixes) always make room for the kick drum. By inserting a compressor on the bass (or master) track and using the kick drum's track as the sidechain input, you can help to control problematic low frequencies that might interfere with the kick drum's attack.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 247 Three tube models, A, B and C, provide a range of distortion characteristics known from real ampli er tubes. Tube A does not produce distortions if Bias is set low, but will kick in whenever the input signal exceeds a certain threshold, creating bright harmonics. Tube C is a very poor tube amp that produces distortions all the time. The qualities of Tube B lie somewhere between these two extremes.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.7 248 EQ Eight The EQ Eight Effect. The EQ Eight effect is an equalizer featuring up to eight parametric lters per input channel, useful for changing a sound's timbre. It extends the functionality of the former EQ Four device, and is fully backward-compatible with EQ Four presets. The input signal can be processed using one of three modes: Stereo, L/R and M/S. Stereo mode uses a single curve to lter both channels of a stereo input equally.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 249 Each lter band can be turned on or off independently. Turn off bands that are not in use to save CPU power. To edit the lter curve, click and drag on the lter dots in the display. Horizontal movement changes the lter frequency, while vertical movement adjusts the lter band's gain. To adjust the lter Q (also called resonance or bandwidth), hold down the Alt (PC) / Alt (Mac) modi er while dragging the mouse.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 250 If you have ever used a good DJ mixer you will know what this is: An EQ that allows you to adjust the level of low, mid and high frequencies independently. Each band can be adjusted from -in nite dB to +6 dB using the gain controls. This means that you can completely remove, for example, the bass drum or bassline of a track, while leaving the other frequencies untouched.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.9 251 Erosion The Erosion Effect. The Erosion effect degrades the input signal by modulating a short delay with ltered noise or a sine wave. This adds noisy artifacts or aliasing/downsampling-like distortions that sound very digital. To change the sine wave frequency or noise band center frequency, click and drag along the X-axis in the X-Y eld. The Y-axis controls the modulation amount.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.10 252 Filter Delay The Filter Delay Effect. The Filter Delay provides three independent delay lines, each preceded by linked lowpass and highpass lters. This allows applying delay to only certain input signal frequencies, as determined by the lter settings. The feedback from each of the three delays is also routed back through the lters. Each of the three delays can be switched on and off independently.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 253 value. The Feedback parameter sets how much of the output signal returns to the delay line input. Very high values can lead to runaway feedback and produce a loud oscillation watch your ears and speakers if you decide to check out extreme feedback settings! Each delay channel has its own volume control, which can be turned up to +12 dB to compensate for drastic ltering at the input. The Dry control adjusts the unprocessed signal level.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 254 The LFOs have six possible waveform shapes: sine, square, triangle, sawtooth up, sawtooth down and random. The extent of LFO in uence on the delays is set with the Amount control. LFO speed is controlled with the Rate control, which can be set in terms of hertz. Rate can also be synced to the song tempo and set in meter subdivisions (e.g., sixteenth notes).
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 255 The Threshold slider sets the gate's sensitivity. If the gate is open and passing signal (i.e., the signal exceeds the gate threshold), the green LED lights. The Attenuation slider, located beneath the Threshold fader, can attenuate signals below the threshold rather than just cutting them off. If set to -inf dB, a closed gate will mute the input signal. A setting of 0.00 dB means that even if the gate is closed, there is no effect on the signal.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 256 by inserting a Gate on the pad's track and choosing the drum loop's track as the sidechain input. 19.13 Grain Delay The Grain Delay Effect. The Grain Delay effect slices the input signal into tiny particles (called grains ) that are then individually delayed and can also have different pitches compared to the original signal source.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 257 parameter to the Y-axis, use the parameter row on the left side. The Feedback parameter sets how much of the output signal returns to the delay line input. Very high values can lead to runaway feedback and produce a loud oscillation watch your ears and speakers if you decide to check out extreme feedback settings! You can transpose the grain pitch with the Pitch parameter, which acts much like a crude pitch shifter.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 258 Phaser uses a series of all-pass lters to create a phase shift in the frequency spectrum of a sound. The Poles control creates notches in the frequency spectrum. The Feedback control can then be used to invert the waveform and convert these notches into peaks (or poles). Filter cutoff frequency is changed with the Frequency control, which can be adjusted in tandem with Feedback using the effect's X-Y controller.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.15 259 Ping Pong Delay The Ping Pong Delay Effect. The Ping Pong Delay effect uses a single tapped delay line to create a delay that jumps from the left to the right output. The delay is preceded by a lowpass and highpass lter that can be controlled with an X-Y controller. To de ne the lter bandwidth, click and drag on the vertical axis. To set the position of the frequency band, click and drag on the horizontal axis.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 260 The Dry/Wet control adjusts the balance between the processed and dry signals. Set it to 100 percent if using Ping Pong Delay in a return track. 19.16 Redux The Redux Effect. Nostalgic for the famed low-resolution sound quality of the Ensoniq Mirage, Fairlight CMI or Commodore-64 computer? Redux returns us to the Dark Ages of digital by reducing a signal's sample rate and bit resolution. The Downsample section has two parameters: switch.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 261 (8 bit resolution). If set to 1, the result is pretty brutal: Each sample contains either a full positive or full negative signal, with nothing in between. Bit Reduction de nes an input signal of 0dB as 16 bit. Signals above 0dB are clipped, and the red overload LED will light up. Turning off Bit Reduction results in modest CPU savings. 19.17 Resonators The Resonators Effect.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 262 adjust the amount of time it takes for the resonators to be silent after getting an input signal. The longer the decay time, the more tonal the result will be, similar to the behavior of an undamped piano string. As with a real string, the decay time depends on the pitch, so low notes will last longer than higher ones. The Const switch holds the decay time constant regardless of the actual pitch. Resonators provides two different resonation modes.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.18.1 263 Input Processing The input signal passes rst through high and low cut lters, whose X-Y controller allows changing the band's center frequency (X-axis) and bandwidth (Y-axis). Either lter may be switched off when not needed to save CPU power. Predelay controls the delay time, in milliseconds, before the onset of the rst early re ection. This delays the reverberation relative to the input signal.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 264 The Size parameter controls the room's volume. At one extreme, a very large size will lend a shifting, diffused delay effect to the reverb. The other extreme a very small value will give it a highly colored, metallic feel. The Stereo Image control determines the width of the output's stereo image.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.18.5 265 Output At the reverb output, you can adjust the effect's overall Dry/Wet mix, and vary the amplitude of re ections and diffusion with the Re ect Level and Diffuse Level controls. 19.19 Saturator The Saturator Effect. Saturator is a waveshaping effect that can add that missing dirt, punch or warmth to your sound. It can coat input signals with a soft saturation or drive them into many different avors of distortion.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 266 Soft Sine, Medium Curve and Hard Curve modes soften signal clipping to varying degrees. Sinoid Fold mode can be good for special effects. The most dramatic effects can be created by selecting the Waveshaper curve, which has its own dedicated set of controls. To access these six parameter elds, unfold the Saturator window by toggling the button in its title bar. The Waveshaper mode's six additional parameters are: Drive, Lin, Curve, Damp, Depth and Period.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.20 267 Simple Delay The Simple Delay Effect. The Simple Delay provides two independent delay lines, one for each channel (left and right). To refer delay time to the song tempo, activate the Sync switch, which allows using the Delay Time beat division chooser. The numbered switches represent time delay in 16th notes. For example, selecting 4 delays the signal by four 16th notes, which equals one beat (a quarter note) of delay.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 19.21 268 Spectrum The Spectrum Device. Spectrum performs realtime frequency analysis of incoming audio signals. The results are represented in a graph, with dB along the vertical axis and frequency/pitch along the horizontal. Note that Spectrum is not an audio effect, but rather a measurement tool - it does not alter the incoming signal in any way. The Block chooser selects the number of samples that will be analyzed in each measurement.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 269 scaling, but switch the legending at the top of the display between Hertz and note names. Linear scaling is particularly useful for detailed analysis of high frequencies. As you move your mouse over Spectrum's display, a box appears that shows the amplitude, frequency and note name at the pointer's position. You can zoom and scroll the amplitude by moving your mouse over the amplitude legending on the display's left side.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 270 appears on both outputs. This is especially useful if you have a stereo le that contains different information on both channels and you want to use only one. The Panorama chooser pans the signal anywhere in the stereo eld. The Width control acts as a continuous mono to stereo controller when set from 0 to 100 percent. However, beyond 100 percent the output starts to fold in on itself.
CHAPTER 19. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 271 Alt (Mac) modi er while dragging vertically in the X-Y display changes the frequency band's Q (bandwidth). The Pinch Effect section adds odd harmonics to the input signal. These distortions typically occur 180 degrees out of phase, creating a richer stereo image. The Pinch Effect has the same controls as the Tracing Model, but generates a rather different sound.
272 Chapter 20 Live MIDI Effect Reference Live comes with a selection of custom-designed, built-in MIDI effects. The Working with Instruments and Effects chapter explains the basics of using effects in Live. 20.1 Arpeggiator The Arpeggiator Effect. Live's Arpeggiator effect takes the individual MIDI notes from a held chord (or single note), and plays them as a rhythmical pattern.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 273 controlled by the device, which also provides a full complement of both classic and original arpeggiator features. Arpeggiators are a classic element in Eighties synth music. The name originates with the musical concept of the arpeggio, in which the notes comprising a chord are played as a series rather than in unison. Arpeggio is derived from the Italian word arpeggiare, which refers to playing notes on a harp. 20.1.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 274 Con & Diverge . Pinky Up and Pinky UpDown . Thumb Up and Thumb UpDown . Play Order places notes in the pattern according to the order in which they are played. This is therefore only recognizable when more than one chord or note has been played. In addition to the Arpeggiator styles above, there are a number of random styles. Random randomly selects incoming MIDI notes for playback.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 275 pressed. When Hold is active and any of the original keys also remain physically held, notes can be added to the pattern simply by playing them. Notes can also be removed from the pattern in this scenario by playing them a second time, allowing the gradual buildup and rearrangement of the pattern over time. Tip: If you want the pattern to stop playing, momentarily deactivate Hold.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 276 The dynamics of Arpeggiator are controlled using the velocity section. With Velocity set to On and Target set to 0, for example, the sequence will gradually fade out, eventually reaching 0 velocity. The Decay control sets the amount of time Arpeggiator takes to reach the Target velocity. With Retrigger activated, retriggering of the sequence will also retrigger the velocity slope.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 277 semitone shift added with the Shift 6 control. Note that no two notes of the same pitch can contribute to the chord, and that selecting the same shift value twice (e.g., +8 semitones on both Shift 2 and Shift 3) will result in the latter control appearing disabled, indicating that it is a duplicate and therefore not in use. Actually, there is no such thing as two notes with the same pitch playing at the same time within the entire Live universe. 20.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 278 On/Off Balance This determines the velocity of the output note. It is a balance between the incoming note's Note On and Note Off velocities. If your MIDI keyboard does not support MIDI Note Off velocity, you can just set this to zero. Decay Time This is the time needed for an incoming note's velocity to decay to zero. The decay begins immediately from the moment the device receives a MIDI Note On message.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 20.5 279 Random The Random Effect. Random adds an element of the unknown to the otherwise commonplace pitch parameter. The Chance control de nes the likelihood that an incoming note's pitch will be changed by a random value. You can think of it as being something like a dry/wet control for randomness.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 280 For example, with Chance set to 100 percent, Choices set to 12 and Scale set to 1, playing C3 once will trigger C3, and each successive C3 will trigger the next semitone higher until the device reaches C4, at which point it will start over at C3. But with Chance set to 100 percent, Choices set to 2 and Scale set to 2, incoming C3s will alternate between C3 and D3.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 281 The Range and Lowest controls work together to de ne the note range within which scale mapping will take effect. Outside of the range de ned by these controls, the Scale effect will be inapplicable, and the LED light will ash to indicate that some notes are not being processed by the effect, but are playing at their unaltered pitch. 20.7 Velocity The Velocity Effect. Velocity re-maps the 127 MIDI note velocity values.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 282 LED below the X-Y display ash when a note is blocked by gating. In Fixed Mode, the Out Hi velocity de nes all outgoing note velocities, regardless of incoming note velocity. The Random function adds or subtracts a random value to the all velocities, and is represented by a gray area on the display curve. The Drive and Compand controls can be combined to create more complex curves. Compand is a simultaneous expanding and compressing tool.
283 Chapter 21 Live Instrument Reference Live comes with a selection of custom-designed, built-in instruments. The Working with Instruments and Effects chapter explains the basics of using instruments in Live. The boxed version of Live LE ships with the Essential Instrument Collection LE Edition, a multi-gigabyte library of meticulously sampled and selected instruments ready for use in Simpler. Learn how to access the EIC sounds at the end of this chapter.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 21.1 284 Impulse The Impulse Instrument. Impulse is a drum sampler with complex modulation capabilities. The eight drum samples loaded into Impulse's sample slots can be time-stretched, ltered and processed by envelope, saturation, pan and volume components, nearly all of which are subject to random and velocity-based modulation. 21.1.1 Sample Slots Drag and drop samples into any of Impulse's sample slots from the Browser or the Session and Arrangement Views.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 285 this behavior also de nes how Impulse reacts to parameter changes from clip envelopes or automation, which are applied once a new note starts. If you want to achieve continuous changes as a note plays, you may want to use the Simpler. Slot 8's parameters also include a Link button, located in the lower left corner, which links slot 8 with slot 7. Linking the two slots allows slot 7's activation to stop slot 8's playback, and vice versa.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 21.1.4 286 Saturator and Envelope The Saturator gives the sample a fatter, rounder, more analog sound, and can be switched on and off as desired. The Drive control boosts the signal and adds distortion. Coincidentally, this makes most signals much louder, and should usually be compensated for by lowering the sample's volume control. Extreme Drive settings on low-pitched sounds will produce the typical, overdriven analog synth drum sounds.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 287 this signal to a separate track. Please see the Routing chapter to learn how to accomplish this for Impulse's overall signal or for Impulse's individual sample slots. 21.2 Simpler The Simpler Instrument. Simpler is an instrument that integrates the basic elements of a sampler with a set of classic synthesizer parameters. A Simpler voice plays a user-de ned sample section, which is in turn processed by envelope, lter, LFO, volume and pitch components. 21.2.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 21.2.2 288 Sample Controls Simpler plays a speci c region or loop of the sample, as determined by a group of sample controls. The Start and Length controls work together to specify where Simpler begins and ends its sweep of the sample. As the name implies, Start de nes where sample playback starts. The sample will play for the length de ned by the Length parameter.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 289 vertically to zoom, and drag horizontally to pan different areas of the sample into view. 21.2.4 Envelope Simpler contains three classic ADSR envelopes, as seen in most synthesizers, for shaping the dynamic response of the sample. Volume-, lter frequency-, and pitch modulation are all modi able by toggling their respective buttons in the envelope section.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 290 30 Hz, or sync to divisions of the Set's tempo. LFOs are applied individually to each voice, or played note, in Simpler. The Key parameter scales each LFO's Rate in proportion to the pitch of incoming notes. A high Key setting assigns higher notes a higher LFO rate. If Key is set to zero, all voices' LFOs have the same rate and may just differ in their phase.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 291 The Voices parameter sets the maximum number of voices that Simpler can play simultaneously. If more voices are needed than have been allocated by the Voices chooser, voice stealing will take place, in which the oldest voice(s) will be dropped in favor of those that are new. For example, if your Voices parameter is set to 8, and ten voices are all vying to be played, the two oldest voices will be dropped.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 292 SONiVOX, Chocolate Audio and Puremagnetik. Note The Essential Instrument Collection is not included with downloadable purchases. Download customers can choose, however, to purchase it later1 . 21.3.1 EIC Installation The Essential Instrument Collection LE Edition is installed separately from the main Live LE installation. The various instruments are grouped into separate Live Packs that can be installed as needed.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 21.3.
294 Chapter 22 MIDI and Key Remote Control To liberate the musician from the mouse, most of Live's controls can be remote-controlled with an external MIDI controller and the computer keyboard. This chapter describes the details of mapping to the following speci c types of controls in Live's user interface: 1. Session View slots Note that MIDI and computer key assignments are bound to the slots, not to the clips they contain. 2.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.1 295 MIDI Remote Control Live can be controlled remotely by external MIDI control surfaces, such as MIDI keyboards or controller boxes. Live also supports the Mackie Control, a topic that is covered in its own section, for completely mouse-free program operation.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL listed here, don't fret Surface Support. 296 it can still be enabled manually in the next section, Manual Control Depending on the controller, Live may need to perform a preset dump to complete the setup. If this is the case, the Dump button to the right of your control surface's choosers in the Live Preferences will become enabled. Before pressing it, verify that your control surface is ready to receive preset dumps.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 297 Control Surfaces Can Follow Device Selection. In addition to following device selection, natively supported control surfaces can be locked to speci c devices, guaranteeing hands-on access no matter where the current focus is in your Live Set. To enable or disable locking, (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) on a device's title bar, and then select your preferred controller from the Lock to... context menu.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.1.2 298 Manual Control Surface Setup If your MIDI control surface is not listed in the MIDI/Sync Preferences' Control Surface chooser, it can still be enabled for manual mapping in the MIDI Ports section of this tab. De ning Control Surfaces Manually. The MIDI Ports table lists all available MIDI input and output ports. To use an input port for remote control of Live, make sure the corresponding switch in its Remote column is set to On.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.1.3 299 Takeover Mode MIDI Controller Takeover Mode. When MIDI controls that send absolute values (such as faders) are used in a bank-switching setup, where they address a different destination parameter with each controller bank, you will need to decide how Live should handle the sudden jumps in values that will occur when moving a control for the rst time after switching the bank.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.2 300 The Mapping Browser The Mapping Browser and Selector. All manual MIDI, computer keyboard and Macro Control mappings are managed by the Mapping Browser. The Mapping Browser is hidden until one of the three mapping modes is enabled. It will then display all mappings for the current mode. For each mapping, it lists the control element, the path to the mapped parameter, the parameter's name, and the mapping's Min and Max value ranges.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.2.1 301 Assigning MIDI Remote Control The MIDI Map Mode Switch. Once your remote control setup has been de ned in the MIDI/Sync Preferences, giving MIDI controllers and notes remote control assignments is simple: 1. Enter MIDI Map Mode by pressing the MIDI switch in Live's upper right-hand corner. Notice that assignable elements of the interface become highlighted in blue, and that the Mapping Browser becomes available.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 302 note is assigned a discrete value, equally spaced over the parameter's range of values. Hint: Session View slots can be assigned to a MIDI note range for chromatic playing: First play the root key (this is the key that will play the clip at its default transposition), and then, while holding down the root key, hold one key below the root and one above it to de ne the limits of the range. 22.2.
303 CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.2.4 Mapping to Relative MIDI Controllers Some MIDI controllers can send value increment and value decrement messages instead of absolute values. These controls prevent parameter jumps when the state of a control in Live and the corresponding control on the hardware MIDI controller differ. For example, imagine that you have assigned the pan knob on your control surface to the pan parameter of a track in Live.
304 CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL available option. Decrement messages make it jump backward. Continuous Controls Each type of relative MIDI controller uses a different interpretation of the 0...127 MIDI controller value range to identify value increments and decrements: Please consult the documentation that came with your MIDI controller if you need further information on relative MIDI controllers.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 305 Relative Session mapping is useful for navigating a large Live Set, as Live always keeps the highlighted scene at the Session View's center. (Note that the number of scenes is limited in Live LE.) Mapping to Clip View Controls The Clip View displays the settings for whichever clip happens to be currently selected, but it will also display the settings of multi-selected clips.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 306 Keyboard assignments can produce the following effects in Live: Clips in Session View slots will be affected by mapped keys according to their Launch Mode settings. Keys assigned to switches will toggle switch states. Keys assigned to radio buttons will toggle through the available options.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.3.1 307 Channel Strips The Eight Channel Strips and the Master Strip. The Mackie Control's eight channel strips and master strip are automatically assigned to tracks in Live. Each of these strips has a set of track controls, including a motorized fader and a V-Pot, for controlling any number of track parameters. The Mackie Control's bank/channel controls allow reassigning the channel strips to access an unlimited number of Live tracks.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 1. Arm By default, this arms the track for recording in exclusion of all other tracks. To arm the track nonexclusively (i.e., in addition to other tracks), hold down the Mackie Control's Control button while pressing this. Note that a Misc Preference setting in Live allows deactivating exclusive track arming. When this setting is deactivated, the behavior of this knob with respect to exclusive and nonexclusive arming is reversed. 2.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.3.2 309 V-Pots and Assignment Switches The V-Pots and Assignment Switches. The Mackie Control's V-Pots have dual functionality in many cases, as they can be both rotated and pressed. When being used to adjust single parameters (those belonging to track devices, for example), pressing a V-Pot returns a control to its default value.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 310 switch) pressing a V-Pot toggles the options. There are six assignment switches to the right of the channel strips on the Mackie Control. These select which parameters are displayed in the main display, and set these parameters to be available for control with the V-Pots. The two-character display above the assignment switches shows the currently selected assignment mode. 1. I/O Switches the V-Pot and main display to I/O mode.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.3.3 311 Bank/Channel and Flip/Return Bank, Channel, Flip and Return Buttons. 1. Bank If more than eight tracks are being used in Live, these buttons can be used to page through the additional tracks and set them to the Mackie Control's eight channel strips. The bank + and - buttons page the channel strips in increments of eight (or more, if a fader extension is installed) to the right or left, respectively.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL button while pressing these. 2. Channel You can use the channel + and - buttons to scroll through the additional tracks singly, setting them to the Mackie Control's eight channel strips. To go to the rst/last track, hold down the Mackie Control's Shift button while pressing these. 3. Flip When ip mode is enabled (as shown by the illuminated LED above the button), the functionality of the V-Pots and faders is switched.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.3.4 313 Transport The Transport Controls. 1. Previous/Next Locator Using these buttons, you can skip forward or backward through the Arrangement from locator to locator. Note that the Arrangement start and end are also marked with invisible locators to which you can navigate using these buttons. The LEDs above these buttons are illuminated when a previous/next locator is available in the respective direction.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 2. Loop On/Off Toggles the Arrangement Loop switch on/off. 3. Punch-In/Punch-Out 4. Home 5. End Toggles Live's Punch-In/Punch-Out switches on/off. Jumps to the Arrangement start, 1.1.1. Jumps to the Arrangement end. 6. Rew/Forw When pressed once, these buttons will move the play position one beat backward/forward. When held down, the buttons move forward/backward in increments of one bar during Arrangement playback, one beat if the Arrangement is stopped.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL Control's Options button while pressing this. 12. Jog Wheel In the Session View, the jog wheel scrolls through the scenes. In the Arrangement View, the jog wheel moves the play position. To change global quantization, hold down the Mackie Control's Control button while turning the jog wheel. You can also use the Mackie Control's Alt button in the Arrangement View to move the play position in smaller increments.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 22.3.5 316 Software-Speci c Controls The Software-Speci c Controls. 1. Shift, Option, Control, Alt Used to access additional Mackie Control options. 2. SMPTE/Beats display. Toggles between displaying beats/bars and SMPTE in the time 3. Name/Value Switches the meters in the main display on/off.
CHAPTER 22. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL meters appear only when pan assignment mode is active. 4. F-Keys These keys can be mapped freely to controls in Live. 5. ViewArr (On) Toggles Arrangement View and Session View. When the Mackie Control's Shift key is held down, this sets the program focus to the Arrangement View or Session View, whichever is currently on screen. 6. ToggleDetail (Rec/Rdy) Toggles Clip View and Track View.
318 Chapter 23 Computer Audio Resources and Strategies Real-time audio processing is a demanding task for general-purpose computers, which are usually designed to run spreadsheets and surf the Internet. An application like Live requires a powerful CPU and a fast hard disk. This section will provide some insight on these issues, and should help you avoid and solve problems with running audio on a computer. 23.
CHAPTER 23. COMPUTER AUDIO RESOURCES AND STRATEGIES 319 Fortunately, Live supports multicore and multiprocessor systems, allowing the processing load from things like instruments, effects and I/O to be distributed among the available resources. Depending on the machine and the Live Set, the available processing power can be several times that of older systems. If you are working on a multicore or multiprocessor system, you will want to enable support for it in the CPU tab of Live's Preferences.
CHAPTER 23. COMPUTER AUDIO RESOURCES AND STRATEGIES 23.1.2 320 CPU Load from Tracks and Devices Generally, every track and device being used in Live incurs some amount of CPU load. However, Live is smart and avoids wasting CPU cycles on tracks and devices that do not contribute anything useful. For example, dragging devices into a Live Set that is not running does not signi cantly increase the CPU load. The load increases only as you start playing clips or feed audio into the effects.
CHAPTER 23. COMPUTER AUDIO RESOURCES AND STRATEGIES 321 Reduce the amount of audio channels being written by choosing mono inputs instead of stereo inputs in the Audio Preferences' Channel Con guration dialog. Use RAM Mode for selected clips. Reduce the number of audio channels playing by using mono samples instead of stereo samples when possible. You can convert stereo samples to mono using any standard digital audio editing program, which can be called up from within Live.
322 Chapter 24 Live 7 Audio Fact Sheet Much of Ableton's recent development effort has been focused on carefully and objectively testing Live's fundamental audio performance. As a result of this testing, we have implemented a number of low-level improvements to the audio engine.
CHAPTER 24. LIVE 7 AUDIO FACT SHEET 323 we will never release an update unless it passes every test. 24.2 Neutral Operations Procedures in Live that will cause absolutely no change in audio quality are referred to as neutral operations. You can be sure that using these functions will never cause any signal degradation. Applying neutral operations to audio that was recorded into Live ensures that the audio will be unchanged from the point of analog-to-digital conversion.
CHAPTER 24. LIVE 7 AUDIO FACT SHEET 324 rendering to a le with the same bit depth as the original results in complete phase cancellation. rendering to a le with a higher bit depth than the original results in complete phase cancellation. rendering to a le with a lower bit depth than the original results in the smallest amount of distortion possible within a 32-bit system. 24.2.
CHAPTER 24. LIVE 7 AUDIO FACT SHEET 24.2.4 325 Summing at Single Mix Points Live 7 uses double precision (64-bit) summing at all points where signals are mixed, including Clip and return track inputs, the Master track and Racks. Mixing in Live is thus a neutral operation for signals mixed at any single summing point.
CHAPTER 24. LIVE 7 AUDIO FACT SHEET 24.2.7 326 Freeze, Flatten (Please note that freezing is not available in Live LE.) When tracks are frozen, the audio les that are created are 32 bit, which ensures that they will not be lower quality than the audio heard prior to freezing.
CHAPTER 24. LIVE 7 AUDIO FACT SHEET 327 frozen audio from the same track via phase cancellation to ensure that the les are identical. 24.2.8 Bypassed Effects Bypassed effects in Live are removed from the signal ow. This is true for both Live's built-in effects devices and third-party VST and AU plug-ins. Consequently, audio at the output of a bypassed effect is identical to the audio at the input. Please note, however, that effects devices with parameters that inherently require delay (e.g.
CHAPTER 24. LIVE 7 AUDIO FACT SHEET 328 The neutrality of clip splitting is tested under a variety of conditions: splitting unwarped clips with loop on and off; splitting warped but unstretched clips with loop on and off; In all cases, output is rendered and compared with the output of an unsplit version of the same source. Phase cancellation testing of the two les con rms that they are identical. 24.
CHAPTER 24. LIVE 7 AUDIO FACT SHEET 24.3.2 329 Sample rate conversion/transposition Sample rate conversion (during both real-time playback and rendering) is a non-neutral operation. Playback of audio les at a sample rate that is different from the rate set in Live's Preferences window will cause signal degradation. Transposition is also a form of sample-rate conversion, and thus also results in non-neutral behavior.
CHAPTER 24. LIVE 7 AUDIO FACT SHEET 24.3.4 330 Dithering Whenever rendering audio to a lower bit depth, it is a good idea to apply dithering in order to minimize artifacts. Dithering (a kind of very low-level noise) is inherently a non-neutral procedure, but it is a necessary evil when lowering the bit resolution. Please note that Live's internal signal processing is all 32-bit, so applying even a single gain change makes the resulting audio 32-bit as well even if the original audio is 16- or 24-bit.
CHAPTER 24. LIVE 7 AUDIO FACT SHEET 331 Normalization is a gain change, which is a non-neutral operation. Also, the new les will be created at the sample rate and bit depth set in Live's Preferences window, which may differ from those in the original audio les. 24.3.8 Clip fades With Clip Fade enabled, a short (up to 4 ms) fade is applied to the clip start and end to avoid clicks at the clip edges. This is a non-neutral operation. 24.3.
CHAPTER 24. LIVE 7 AUDIO FACT SHEET 332 Record audio into Live using high-quality hardware components (audio interface, cables, etc.) and at the highest sample rate and bit depth your interface and computer will support. Avoid using samples that are at different sample rates within the same project. If you want to work with such les, we recommend that you rst convert them to the sample rate set for your audio interface in an of ine application that is optimized for this task.
333 Chapter 25 Live 7 MIDI Fact Sheet In conjunction with our work on the audio engine, Ableton has spent additional effort analyzing Live's MIDI timing and making improvements where necessary. We wrote this fact sheet to help users understand the problems involved in creating a reliable and accurate computer-based MIDI environment, and to explain Live's approach to solving these problems.
CHAPTER 25. LIVE 7 MIDI FACT SHEET 334 ware device (such as a MIDI keyboard) into a DAW for storage. An ideal recording environment would capture this incoming information with perfect timing accuracy in relation to the timeline of the song as accurately as an audio recording. 2) Playback refers to two related scenarios when dealing with DAWs. The rst involves sending MIDI note and controller information from the DAW to a hardware device such as a synthesizer.
CHAPTER 25. LIVE 7 MIDI FACT SHEET 335 needs to be moved from one such process to another when converting MIDI data into a plug-in's playback, for example. Jitter-free MIDI timing involves accurate conversion between different clocks within the system's components the MIDI interface, audio interface, and the DAW itself. The accuracy of this conversion depends on a variety of factors, including the operating system and driver architecture used.
CHAPTER 25. LIVE 7 MIDI FACT SHEET makes it possible to record events to the clip at the time you hear them play them. 336 not the time you For playback of hardware devices, Live also generates timestamps that it attempts to communicate to the MIDI interface drivers for scheduling of outgoing MIDI events. Windows MME drivers cannot process timestamps, however, and for devices that use these drivers, Live schedules outgoing events internally.
337 CHAPTER 25. LIVE 7 MIDI FACT SHEET timestamps attached to incoming MIDI events are accurate, and that outgoing events will be dealt with appropriately by any external hardware. But both situations are impossible for Live to verify. 25.
CHAPTER 25. LIVE 7 MIDI FACT SHEET 338 Windows: Interface A: The maximum jitter was +/- 4 ms, with the majority of the jitter occurring at +/- 1 ms. Interface B: For most of the tests, the maximum jitter was +/- 3 or 4 ms. At 96 kHz and 1024 sample buffer, there were a small number of events with +/- 5 ms of jitter. At 44.1 kHz and 512 sample buffer, occasional events with +/- 6 ms occurred. In all cases, the majority of the jitter occurred at +/- 1 ms.
339 CHAPTER 25. LIVE 7 MIDI FACT SHEET Live MIDI Clip MIDI-to-Audio Converter Audio Recording (another instance of Live) Audio Clip In all cases, the output tests showed comparable results to the input tests. 25.6 Tips for Achieving Optimal MIDI Performance In order to help users achieve optimal MIDI performance with Live, we have provided a list of recommended practices and program settings.
CHAPTER 25. LIVE 7 MIDI FACT SHEET 340 you experience timing issues, we recommend switching to the other mode. This is set in the MIDI Ports list in the MIDI/Sync Preferences. Selecting the MIDI Port Type (Windows). 25.7 Summary and Conclusions Ableton wrote this paper in order to help users understand a variety of related topics: the inherent problems in computer-based MIDI systems; our approach to solving these problems in Live; additional variables that we cannot account for.
341 Chapter 26 Live Keyboard Shortcuts 26.
342 CHAPTER 26. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS Windows Hide/Show Crossfader Open the Preferences Close Window/Dialog 26.2 Ctrl Alt Ctrl , Esc Macintosh Alt F F , Esc Accessing Menus Under Windows, you can access each menu by pressing Alt and the rst letter of the F for File, for instance). While a menu is open, you can use: menu ( Alt to navigate the menu items; to open the neighboring menu; Return 26.3 to choose a menu item.
343 CHAPTER 26. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 26.4 Browsing In addition to the shortcuts shown here, editing shortcuts can also be used in the Browser. Windows Scroll Up/Down Open/Close Folders Set Selected Folder as Browser Root Load Selected Item from Browser Macintosh Return Return or Double- Return Click Preview Selected File Activate Browser Search Mode Jump to Search Results or Double- Return Click Return Ctrl Return F F 26.
344 CHAPTER 26. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 26.
345 CHAPTER 26. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 26.7 Loop Brace and Start/End Markers The loop brace and start/end markers must rst be selected before any of the following commands will apply to them. Move Start Marker to Position Nudge Loop Left/Right Move Loop By Loop Length Double/Halve Loop Length Shorten/Lengthen Loop Select Material in Loop Windows Click Macintosh Click Ctrl Ctrl Click Loop Brace or Ctrl Click Loop Brace or L L 26.8 Session View Commands See also the editing commands.
346 CHAPTER 26. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 26.9 Arrangement View Commands The shortcuts for zooming, snapping/drawing and loop/region settings also work in the Arrangement View. See also the editing commands. Windows Split Clip at Selection Consolidate Selection into Clip Loop Selection Insert Silence Pan Left/Right of Selection Unfold all Tracks Scroll Display to Follow Playback 26.
347 CHAPTER 26. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 26.11 Commands for Breakpoint Envelopes The shortcuts for zooming, snapping/drawing and loop/region settings also work in the Envelope Editor and Arrangement View. See also the editing commands. Windows Finer Resolution for Dragging Enable Dragging Over Breakpoints 26.12 Macintosh Ctrl Key/MIDI Map Mode and the Computer MIDI Keyboard Windows Toggle MIDI Map Mode Toggle Key Map Mode Computer MIDI Keyboard 26.
348 CHAPTER 26. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 26.14 Clip View Sample Display The shortcuts for zooming and loop/region settings also work in the Sample Display. Windows Move Selected Warp Marker Select Warp Marker Scroll Display to Follow Playback Move Clip Region with Start Marker 26.15 Macintosh Ctrl Ctrl F F Clip View MIDI Editor The shortcuts for zooming, snapping/drawing and loop/region settings also work in the MIDI Editor.
349 CHAPTER 26. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 26.16 Grid Snapping and Drawing Windows Toggle Draw Mode Narrow Grid Widen Grid Triplet Grid Snap to Grid Fixed/Zoom-Adaptive Grid Bypass Snapping While Dragging 26.
350 CHAPTER 26. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 26.18 Working with Sets and the Program Windows New Live Set Open Live Set Close Live Set Save Live Set Save Live Set As... Quit Live Hide Live Export Audio/Video Export MIDI le 26.
CHAPTER 26. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 26.20 351 Using the Context Menu A context menu is available in Live for quick access to many commonly used menu items. To access the context menu, (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) on the part of the interface where you would like to execute a particular command. It is worth noting that Live's context menu may sometimes contain applicable settings from the Preferences.
352 Chapter 27 Live 7 LE vs.
353 CHAPTER 27. LIVE 7 LE VS.
354 CHAPTER 27. LIVE 7 LE VS.
355 Index A Ableton e-mail addresses sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 technical support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 web addresses registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 unlocking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 webshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Adaptive Grid options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Add/Remove Stop Button command . . . . 90 analysis les . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX Auto-Hide Plug-In Windows preference 200 Auto-Open Plug-In Windows preference 200 Auto-Warp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Auto-Warp Long Samples preference . . 115 Automatic Rescan on Each Search . . . . . . . 36 automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26, 214 and grid lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .218 drawing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
357 INDEX adding/removing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Clip Update Rate preference . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Clip View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 and playing the Arrangement . . . . . . . 73 and remote control mapping . . . . . . 305 scrub area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Clip View boxes selector . 96, 128, 140, 222 clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 adding fades to . . . . . . . . .
358 INDEX and tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 in the Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Delete Fragmentary Bar Time command 76 Delete Locator button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Delete Locator command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Delete Time command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Delete Time Signature Change command 75 Demo Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Detune eld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
359 INDEX le management . . . . . . . . . see Manage Files command File Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 File Type preference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 File/Folder Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 and VST Plug-ins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Filter Delay effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 Fixed Grid command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Fixed Grid options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
360 INDEX Insert Scene command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Lock Envelopes switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Insert Silence command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Look/Feel Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Insert Time Signature Change command 75 loop brace instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see devices in the Arrangement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 with clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
361 INDEX Maximum Cache Size preference . . . . . . . . 42 Metronome switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 MIDI exporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 quantizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134, 186 sending bank/program changes . . . 111 MIDI clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see clips MIDI controllers . . . . . . . .see control surfaces MIDI Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95, 127 and drawing MIDI . . . .
362 INDEX Paste Time command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 pencil tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Draw Mode Phaser effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Ping Pong Delay effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Pitch Bend quick-chooser button . . . . . . . see quick-chooser buttons Pitch effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278 Play button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 plug-ins, using . . . . . .
INDEX Repeat Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 resampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . .154, see recording Rescan Plug-Ins preference . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 Resonators effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 return tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22, 172 Reverb effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 Diffusion Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 Early Re ections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
364 INDEX and editing MIDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 and exporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Select Next Scene on Launch option . . . . 86 Select Next Scene on Launch preference 304 Select on Launch preference . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Send controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 172 serial number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Session View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 and Arrangement View . . .
365 INDEX and scene names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87, 90 time signature changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Toggle Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Tones Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Track Activator switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Track Delay control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .177 Track Delays selector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 track meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX Vinyl Distortion effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 Volume control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 Volume quick-chooser button . . . . . . . . . . see quick-chooser buttons VST Plug-ins, using . . . . . . . . . . . . .see devices VST Plug-In Custom Folder button . . . . . 201 W Warp ... BPM From Here command . . . . 123 Warp As ...-Bar Loop command . . . . . . . . 122 Warp From Here (Start At ...) command 122 Warp From Here (Straight) command . . .
